Lea Ypi’s memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize for a book that “best evokes the spirit of a place.” Ypi was born in Albania in the last decade of the Communist regime. Free is a two-part chronicle of her childhood under the regime and the 90s rush to transform the country into a liberal democracy. The judging panel—comprised of poet Sandeep Parmar, YA author Patrice Lawrence, and writer and lawyer Philippe Sands—praised the Ypi for her ability to weave the personal and the historical. “Reading and rereading Lea Ypi’s Free we felt very strongly that the book’s central concerns – politics, personal history, the very meaning of freedom – spoke so resonantly to our lived moment,” they said of the book. Turkish author Elif Shafak was also in the running for the £10,000 prize for her novel The Island of Missing Trees, along with The Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore, Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn, Writing the Camp by Yousif M Qasmiyeh, and Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera. Free has received wide critical acclaim in the UK where it was also shortlisted for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. The prize was ultimately won by Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain, a history of the Sackler dynasty and their role in funding the opioid epidemic in the United States. In Albania, Ypi’s memoir—which has been published as novel—has received mixed coverage. Among the praise, reviewers have criticized the book for factual inaccuracies, with others saying it should have been more explicit in its condemnation of the Communist regime. Nevertheless, last week, the book’s self-translation into Albanian won the “Lumo Skëndo” prize for non-fiction. https://exit.al/en/2022/05/05/albania-author-wins-british-literary-prize-for-memoir-about-communism/

Travel is about to become more personal than ever. Countries, regions and cities that emphasis niche, not mass tourism, will be the winners.  For almost 20 years as the editor of In Your Pocket, Europe’s largest publisher of locally-produced travel guides, I watched firsthand as the travel and tourism sector in Central and Eastern Europe developed from what had for a long period been almost an afterthought to become one of the key drivers of a number of regional economies. This change has not been across the board, however. While in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Montenegro, travel and tourism now accounts (or at least did – pre-Covid-19) for around a fifth of GDP, offering employment to millions of people across the region, in many countries in emerging Europe, travel and tourism continues to represent a vast, untapped reservoir of potential which is at best neglected, at worst ignored entirely. What has held so many countries back is a philosophy that can perhaps be best described by paraphrasing the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson in the film Field of Dreams: if we have it, they will come. As one of the region’s largest economies, Romania, demonstrates, merely possessing the kind of attractions that should appeal to visitors (be it beaches, mountains, natural wonders, historic cities, ski resorts – or all of these things) does not guarantee that foreign tourists will come. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), the number of foreign tourist arrivals in Romania in 2019 was just 2.7 million, well below neighbouring Bulgaria (9.3 million). While tourism accounts for more than 11 per cent of Bulgaria’s foreign exports, for Romania the figure is just four per cent. And Romania is not the only country in the region clearly performing below its potential. Latvia attracted just 1.9 million foreign tourists in 2019, while to the south Lithuania received 2.9 million, and Estonia to the north saw 3.3 million tourist arrivals. A lack of a coherent and well-channeled tourism promotion strategy is part of the problem. But it does not fully explain the discrepancies between neighbours with otherwise similar potential. Finding the right niche is also a key factor, and it is here that certain countries have failed almost entirely. For many, what caught them napping was price. As was the case with many other sectors, such as manufacturing, for decades the emerging Europe region offered cut-price deals to foreign visitors, who were happy to forego a few luxuries and conveniences in order to grab themselves a cheap holiday. It was this approach that formed the backbone of tourism to emerging Europe before 1989. And here, I again write from experience. The sole reason for example that I chose Borovets in Bulgaria for a ski holiday in February 1989, just months before the country’s communist regime collapsed, was price: skiing in Bulgaria was incomparably cheaper than it was almost anywhere else in Europe. The secret of tourism success But while the huge price differential between East and West continued well after the fall of communism, it couldn’t last forever. The countries of the region therefore faced a problem: how to continue to be attractive to holidaymakers if their key selling point had gone? Some, like Montenegro, rebranded entirely to become exclusive, luxury destinations favoured by the ostentatiously wealthy and the discretely wealthy alike: there are cafes and restaurants in Porto Montenegro where the price of food and drink can make the eyes of even billionaires, newly arrived on their mega-yachts, water. Other countries, such as Bulgaria, preferred to try and keep prices as low as possible by competing with other mass-tourism destinations such as Spain. (While its numbers are good, however, it has arguably made the same mistakes as Spain in the 1970s: over development blights large parts of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast as well as some of its mountain resorts, Bansko in particular). Nevertheless, while both approaches have their drawbacks, both have been (with some caveats) successful. Montenegro’s niche looks secure, and Bulgarian tourism – although hit by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic – goes from strength to strength. Then there are countries which had almost no tourism industry to speak of prior to 1989 – Albania for example, which welcomed 5.9 million foreign tourists in 2019, according to the UNWTO, or Georgia (5.1 million). What makes these countries successful while others around them mark time? A changing demographic When In Your Pocket published its first city guide, to the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in 1992, although intended for all it was unashamedly geared first and foremost towards a backpacker generation of intrepid travellers on a shoestring budget. As we expanded across emerging Europe, this approach continued, as we remained committed to helping travellers who wanted to find the best value accommodation and cheap food and drink as they were by far their largest demographic visiting the region. But by the beginning of the 2000s, however, this was beginning to change, and our content adapted to cater more for travellers who wanted to stay in the best hotels, eat gourmet food and spend their nights in sophisticated clubs. To its credit, most of the region was by then itself ready to accommodate such visitors. The boom in hotel construction in the first part of the 2000s, which saw the biggest (and most luxurious) hotel chains open up grand establishments across the region is evidence of this. The sudden availability of ridiculously cheap flights across Europe in the early 2000s also led to a boom in travel, this time in short city breaks, a sector that had hitherto in the region been the preserve of just a few Central European cities, such as Budapest, Krakow, and Prague. Suddenly, people from across Europe could fly to Lviv, Sarajevo, Tirana, and even Tbilisi for just a few euros. Some cities were better prepared than others, and countries that had been geared towards longer – primarily beach – holidays saw visitor numbers fall as travellers took more, but shorter trips. Now, in the wake of Covid-19 they need to prepare for a new change: a return to longer holidays, based on experiences and increasingly niche. Bird watching in Romania’s Danube Delta, heli-skiing in the Caucasus, yachting around Croatia’s thousands of islands. The one-size-fits-all approach to travel is no longer a winner, and countries, regions and cities which have built their tourism sectors on such a strategy could find themselves struggling. Those who have never taken travel seriously meanwhile will be left even further behind. It’s time to rethink travel and tourism. Its future will be sustainable, and personal. Investment in the sector – be it public or private – will need to take this into account. https://emerging-europe.com/after-hours/the-future-of-travel-in-cee-more-than-anywhere-is-personal/

For Albania’s share of employment in high-skilled occupations to reach the Western Balkans average, more than 100,000 people (nine per cent of the workforce) need to transfer from low- and medium skilled jobs to high-skilled jobs. Albania’s economic model requires greater investment in people’s skills, firm productivity, sustainability, and public finances, according to a new report from the World Bank. The new World Bank Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) for Albania, published last week, says that the country has been severely impacted by the economic shocks which followed both an earthquake in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic. It says that once the ongoing health crisis subsides, the country will need to refocus on its long-term economic objectives, which include building a strong and sustainable growth model to improve citizens’ living standards, thereby helping incentivise people with skills and talent to remain in Albania. Albania’s working-age population continues to shrink as people emigrate in search of better job opportunities. The Albanian diaspora represents 57 per cent of the country’s current population, one of the highest in the world. While Albania’s population of 2.8 million in 2020 has remained constant since the early 1980s, it has aged rapidly due to the continuous emigration of working-age Albanians and a decline in the fertility rate, from 3.4 in 1980 to an average of 1.62 in 2015–20. “Through this report, we conduct a fresh analysis of Albania’s development challenges, summarise progress with reform implementation, and offer key recommendations that can help Albania achieve a sustainable, resilient and inclusive economic recovery,” says Emanuel Salinas, World Bank country manager for Albania. “In our recommendations we also focus on what needs to be done to enable the Albanian people to have healthy and productive lives and more and better jobs.” Four key priorities The report discusses four development priorities to strengthen the Albanian economy. The first of these is investing in people and upskilling. The report says that to address the skills gap, Albania needs to shift its workforce from low- and medium-skilled jobs to high-skilled ones, but acknowledges that this a huge challenge. For example, for Albania’s share of employment in high-skilled occupations to reach the average of the Western Balkans, 111,000 workers (nine per cent of the workforce) would need to transfer from low- and medium skilled jobs to high-skilled jobs. This, the report suggests, requires improving the learning process, reforming the university system, and better matching skills development to labour market needs. Second is increasing firm productivity and creating better job opportunities. GDP per person employed in Albania would increase by 40 per cent if Albanian businesses had the same level of productivity as the average Western Balkan firm. For Albanian firms to be more productive, the business environment must be improved, innovation must be strengthened, and integration of Albanians into the global economy must be deepened. Thirdly, building a more sustainable growth model. More than 70 per cent of Albania’s waste is mismanaged, while earthquakes and floods cause damage costing 147 million US dollars each year, on average. The reports says that Albania needs to build an economic model that is environmentally conscious, and more resistant to natural disasters. The fourth priority if strengthening public finances. Albania’s public debt is well above the average of the six Western Balkan countries. To ensure the sustainability of the country’s finances, personal income tax rates should be fairer, VAT revenues increased, and fiscal policy credibility reinforced, particularly through a sustained political commitment to fiscal rules. https://emerging-europe.com/news/upskilling-key-to-albanias-continued-growth-new-report-suggests/