Available online at www.ijournalse.org Emerging Science Journal (ISSN: 2610-9182) Vol. 6, Special Issue "COVID-19: Emerging Research", 2022 Page | 33 The Impact of COVID–19 on Albanian Tourism Sevdie Alshiqi 1 , Arbana Sahiti 1* 1 Assistant Professor, Department Management and Informatics, Faculty of Economic, University of Prishtina "Hasan Prishtina", Kosova. Abstract Objectives: Nowadays, tourism continues to represent the most dynamic and open part of the countries’ economic system. This research paper explores tourism in Albania over the years, with particular focus on the development of tourism during the pandemic situation, mainly the number of entrances and exits of visitors to the country compared to the years before. Methods/Analysis: This study will take into consideration the secondary data provided by the World Travel and Tourism Council and INSTAT Albania focused on 2020 as the pandemic year, compared to the previous years by investigating the movements of visitors in Albania, their origins, and the ways of travel through seaports, air, or land. The travel purposes of Albanian visitors are different, but this research will focus only on those purposes for holidays during the summer season. The data will be presented through the percentage of a frequency distribution at each entrance and exit point, in some cases explained by tables and graphs, comparing the months in the peak summertime. Findings: Statistical analyses represented in this research give a clear picture of developing tourism in Albania during the pandemic year, mostly tourists from Kosovo. Improvement: This research paper summarized some specific recommendations for government institutions and SMEs specializing in the tourism sector to be ready for the future challenge, even deep dives in the pandemic zone. JEL Classification: N 20, N3 E24, P23 J5 Keywords: Albania; COVID-19; Entrances; Exits; Pandemic Situation; Tourism; Tourists. Article History: Received: 11 November 2021 Revised: 08 January 2022 Accepted: 17 January 2022 Published: 07 February 2022 1- Introduction Tourism in Albania plays a significant role and is considered a segment that provides economic development and economic growth. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) income from tourism is high, and the direct effect of tourism on GDP is more than 70 milliard leke, with the total effect on the economy more than 250 milliard leke. The tourism industry offers job vacancies, including more than 20% in workplaces. One of the fundamental questions the tourism researchers consistently seek to answer is why tourists travel [1, 2]. Therefore, travel motivators are very popular research topics in the tourism field. According to Changuk Lee (2002) [3], this area of tourism research is more likely to link with social psychology knowledge. While there is no universally accepted theory of tourist motivation [4], the researchers have provided different theories and models to study the travel motivators, including Push and Pull motivators, Travel Career Ladder Model, Cognitive Motivation Model, etc. In the meantime, apart from tourism motivators, tourism was viewed by many analysts from very different established ways from 1980s, such as history, economics, and politics, with even geographers taking part in it [5]. Different countries also seem to have different methods and policies for the management of their tourism branch. The pandemic situation is going to have big effects on the whole economy of Albanian and the tourist industry, as well. According to the annual report of the World Travel and Tourism Council, the impact of tourism on a country’s GDP rise was about 8.5% in 2019, and the whole * CONTACT: arbana.sahiti@uni-pr.edu DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.28991/esj-2022-SPER-03 © 2022 by the authors. Licensee ESJ, Italy. This is an open access article under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).