ITB Host Country Albania: Prime Minister Edi Rama at the opening press conference

Albania's tourism industry is booming – and the figures speak for themselves. At the opening press conference of ITB Berlin 2025, Prime Minister, His Excellency Edi Rama, impressively explained why the country was chosen as the official host country of the World's Largest Travel Trade Show this year. Albania is one of the world's most rapidly growing travel destinations and currently has the fastest expanding airport in Europe. German visitors in particular are increasingly discovering Albania for themselves. Only a few years ago, there were barely a few ten thousand, but by 2023, 374,000 Germans had already visited the country. Rama said: “When the Germans come, we know that provides a strong basis for further tourism to develop.“

International growth is also on a steep upward trend. The number of foreign visitors rose from 4.5 million in 2023 to 4.8 million in 2024. In view of Albania's GDP, the economic significance of this growth was huge, the prime minister said.

Taking a brief excursion into the past, Rama highlighted how radically Albania had changed. In the 1990s, the country was still completely isolated - from both East and West. Bizarre anecdotes from that period, about the strict ban on beards, or the hairdresser set up especially for tourists at the airport, showed how open the country had become.

Today, Tirana International Airport registers 11 million passengers a year and has overtaken Serbia’s Belgrade Airport, for example. For some years now, Albania has ranked alongside Saudi Arabia and Qatar as one of the fastest growing travel destinations in the world – even without a FIFA World Cup or religious pilgrimage site like Mecca.

With such rapid growth, Albania now takes centre stage as the Host Country of ITB Berlin 2025 - showing the world why it is one of the most exciting travel destinations of the future.