Social Innovation and Sustainable Economic Development: Participatory Tourism Destination Management

The importance of tourism for the Balkan region is growing (World Travel & Tourism Council 2017). Tourist numbers are increasing, and, perhaps given the lack of much promising alternatives, governments embrace tourism as a priority economic develop- ment sector. There is however a substantial gap between governments aiming at tour- ism development, and tourism practices in real life. Tourism is a fragmented sector with many service providers and a dynamic tourism demand. Since tourists organize their travel increasingly by themselves with the support of internet (Nientied & Karafili, 2016) tourism demand also becomes more diverse and ad hoc. The increasingly impor- tant role of internet, the lower fares of airlines, and tourist searching for new destina- tions offer opportunities for the Western Balkan. However, Western Balkan governments have no adequate answers to such developments and for example marketing is rather conventional and destination management is inadequate. The Albanian government recognizes the importance of tourism as an economic growth sector, yet, its contribution to the GDP is almost insignificant based on the National Institute of Statistics data. The latter may not be a genuine reflection of the real situation for numerous factors, among which informality. According to Medina and Schneider (2018) and Boka and Torluccio (2013), the informal sector in Albania accounts for at least 30% of the GDP. The World Tourism and Travel Council, how- ever, assess that the direct contribution of the sector during 2016 is 7.9%, with a growth rate projection of 5.4% annually (WTTC 2016). Despite contradicting fig- ures, the Government of Albania aims at developing tourism in its broadest sense and to extend the tourism season to span across all four seasons by introducing alternative forms of tourism, such as sightseeing, cultural, culinary, sportive, histori- cal, religious, and adventurous. This would lift the development pressure off the coastal area and shift the focus towards more inland destinations. The Government’s overall development strategy is the National Draft-Strategy for Tourism 2014–2020. This strategy has two significant flaws. First, 3 years after discus- sion in parliament, it is still a draft policy. Insufficient attention has been given to the strategy after delivering the draft. In the real world, the importance of the policy is lim- ited. Second, the strategy is broad and aims at promoting “everything”. The strategy talks about sustainable tourism, but does not elaborate the concept in practical measures for destination management, environmental management, etc. In practice, it is noted that tourism development is rather uncoordinated, is led by the private sector tourism service providers, and the role of government at local and regional level is limited. A risk is that local governments (and national government too) are eager to get investors and can easily “forget” about sustainability when investors come with a tourism project proposal. Indeed, the current conditions for sustainable tourism in Albania are rather unfavourable. The current tourism policy of the government is inconclusive with regard to sustainable tourism development, the priorities for short-term economic development are high (and much higher than the concern for environment and communities), and local governments are weak in applying regulations. In terms of management and coordination, the culture of working together in partnerships in destinations is weak. The experience of tourism in the Durres coastal region, close to Albania’s capital Tirana, gives ample reasons for concern. Tourism development along the Durres coast is a typical example of unsustainable tourism as it is seasonal sun-sea-sand tourism, with high environmental costs and congestion. Local governments have issued permits for construction of hotels, and later “discovered” that their actions led to serious reper- cussions, such as higher investments needed in infrastructure. Alternatives for this type of tourism development are needed. There are however only very few best practices on small-scale sustainable tourism in Albania, and no replicable local sustainable tourism models have been designed and promoted. Exactly this issue is taken up in a sustain- able tourism project developed in the Albanian municipality of Gramsh. The concept is to develop an innovation in local scale tourism, based on available resources and with local coordination. The role of an external NGO (non-government organization) is meant to fuel the process during the first 2 years and then develop others sustainable tourism cases. Before discussing the case of Gramsh, attention first turns to a brief discussion of the two key concepts of social innovation and sustainable tourism, and to the methodology of social network analysis, used for the present study