DMOs are Destination Management Organisations, or Destination marketing Organisation, who are mostly non profit organisation based in a certain touristic destination, which members are private and public stakeholders.
Today is become very important that a destination be managed by community itself, including all actors in tourism field, starting with businesses in the sector such as hotels, restaurants, guesthouses, agrotourism farms, resorts, but also artisans, tourist guides, environment or tourism associations and also public institutions in the destination.
Especially after COVID19, destinations are working so hard, to become
sustainable, to keep focus on attracting tourists during all the year, but from
the other hand to care for their destination, to make it more sustainable, to
preserve culture, tradition, environment and to find better ways to help the
whole community to profit from tourism, even the far reaching villages.
Albanian government approved a Strategy of Sustainable Tourism in 2019-2023. This strategy has as its 5th objective, creating DMOs in the
country, especially in the main regions, and also to implement a legislation
framework for this DMOs to function and be financially supported.
But since it was improved, nothing has be done for the 5th objective. There are some DMOs created in the country, such as DMO Korca, Visit Tirana, Visit Gjirokastra, Visit Dibra, Visit Kukes, but still they are working
in sporadic way, without a proper model, financed by different donors, but not for a long time
A project by DMO ALBANIA (a destination management organization, based in Tirana) which is involved in consultancy to create DMOs, such as Visit Tirana and Visit Gjirokastra, is starting an awareness campaign to stress the
importance of DMOs for sustainable tourism in the country, but also to lobby to policymakers to implement the Strategy they approved for DMOs. The project is titled: “Raising awareness and lobbying policy makers for the development of the DMO model in Albania, in implementation of the 2019-2023 strategy for Sustainable Tourism”, which falls under action titled “ Dialogue for
Inclusive Evidence- Based Policy Dialogue in Albania”, implemented by Co
Plan, Financed by European Union.
