New figures released by Eurostat this month make for interesting reading if you love Albania as much as we do.
According to reports of the data, Albania led Europe for growth in overnight stays in tourist accommodation in 2025, with an increase of around 27%. That’s far ahead of anywhere else, with Malta a distant second, while neighbouring Montenegro actually saw a small fall.
This really doesn’t surprise us! We’ve been saying for years that Albania is the best up-and-coming destination in Europe, with the best value and the nicest people. Yes, we’re a tad biased, but we’re not wrong!
What caught our attention was the next figure, something Eurostat calls “tourism intensity”. In plain English, it’s the number of tourist nights a country gets for every person who lives there, and it’s a good measure of how much pressure tourism puts on a place. Albania sits at around 4 tourist nights per resident, well below the EU average of 7. Montenegro has roughly double Albania’s figure, and Croatia tops the whole of Europe at 24.5.
So, while Albania is growing faster than anywhere else in Europe, it still has a fraction of the crowds of its neighbours. If you’ve ever shuffled along the walls of Dubrovnik in August, you’ll know exactly what that means! In Albania, you can still feel like you have a UNESCO old town almost to yourself, find a quiet cove on the Riviera, or enjoy a personal experience at a family-run winery.
There’s another clue in the numbers too. Albania recorded about ten times as many tourist nights in August as in February. Most visitors arrive in high summer and head for the beach, which means the spring and autumn months are wonderfully peaceful. These are the times we love most, with warm weather, green countryside and the historic sites free of crowds. Our best time to visit Albania guide has more on each season.
The report also made us look at our own figures here at Experience Albania. In 2026, our customers have stayed an average of 10.24 nights. That’s time to see the beaches and the cities, the castles and the mountains, and to enjoy the food, the wine and the people properly, rather than ticking off a highlight or two. Longer stays spread across the country also mean more of our customers’ money goes to the family-run hotels, guides, restaurants and wineries that make Albania so special.
Authentic Albanian experiences take time. That’s exactly what you get when you book with us, along with over 30 years of personal knowledge of a country we fell in love with long before it was anyone’s idea of a holiday destination.
If you’d like to discover Albania before everyone else does, get in touch. We’ll build a trip around you, at a pace that lets you really get to know the place.
