Abstract
The aim is to develop a profile of Albania’s hotels based on a critical analysis of the attitude of foreign tourists visiting the country. COVID-19 negatively affected the Albanian tourism sector because 2,657,818 foreign citizens visited Albania in 2020, which is 41.49% less than in 2019. To investigate the potential of Albanian tourists, this study employs a quantitative analysis and a Regression Model. The results demonstrate that the tourist is a rational decision-maker and our findings indicate that there are differences in expectations and perceptions among respondents. These differences are not significantly correlated with the respondents’ gender, but in terms of education level, the differences are significant for empathy, where the respondents with a college degree have a higher level of expectations than respondents that have higher education. Our findings highlight the practical implications of research for managers of hotels because they have to take into account that tourists are very sensitive to the level of understanding of their specific needs by hotel staff. Recently, more than before pandemic COVID-19, the relationship between expectations and perceptions of tourists visiting Albania is strongly influenced by tangible elements of the touristic package.
Highlights
It was expected that tourism would be the most affected sector of the economy, even though it is the most vulnerable sector, and among the sectors with significant incomes for Albanians, given that in 2019 the country was visited by 6.4 million foreign tourists who spent about 2 billion Euro [1]
We evaluated the differences between perceptions and expectations of tourists visiting Albania (Table 4)
The number of tourists visiting Albania is growing year by year, with an average annual growth of almost 15% and the semester with the most tourists arriving in Albania is the third semester of the year, which corresponds to the summer vacation period
Summary
Tourism is an important and rapidly growing sector within the national and international economy, boosted by the development of new tourist markets. It was expected that tourism would be the most affected sector of the economy, even though it is the most vulnerable sector, and among the sectors with significant incomes for Albanians, given that in 2019 the country was visited by 6.4 million foreign tourists who spent about 2 billion Euro [1]. Considering the tourism services market is very important for Albania’s development, with customized offers in response to customer requests, we evaluated Albania’s foreign tourist potential. We assessed the extent to which the quality of tourism services in Albania (in the central area, from cities such as Tirana—the country’s capital city and Durres—the largest port city and the largest beach area in the country) live up to the expectations of tourists. The questions are the following: Is there any difference between tourists’ expectations and perceptions of service quality in the Albanian tourist market? The questions are the following: Is there any difference between tourists’ expectations and perceptions of service quality in the Albanian tourist market? If so, what solutions do we have to reduce this difference in tourists’ favor?
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