Tourism as sustainable development? The Albanian experience of ?transition?

Despite significant increases in international tourist arrivals and tourism receipts since the fall of communism in central and eastern europe as a whole, in the rural southeastern corner of the continent, a region well-endowed with a range of natural and cultural tourism resources, instability and uncertainty have constrained international tourism development in the 1990s. This regional context for tourism development and the specific issues which surround a tourism-led development model in a small developing country are addressed with particular reference to the recent experience of Albania. As part of a sustainable rural development programme, rural tourism's role as a counterbalance to rejuvenated mass coastal tourism is evaluated. Potentially an important vehicle for cultural expression and employment regeneration, the adoption of rural tourism as a development vehicle is faced with a number of obstacles, which national, and perhaps international, development programmes need to address.