At a meeting with tourism businesses in Durrës, Albania's Ministry of Finance outlined the 2026 operational plan for the tourism sector. The plan aims to deepen formalisation of tourism activity through higher tax compliance, better transparency and service standards, and the use of advanced technologies and artificial intelligence to identify undeclared or high risk taxpayers. Implementation will include targeted controls based on risk analysis, checks on full and accurate income declarations, monitoring of employee declarations and indicative wage levels as part of tax risk assessment, and verification that electronic invoicing is correctly used for each service. The ministry cited 2025 data for Durrës showing growth in tourism related activity, employment, declared wages and tax receipts, including a roughly 74% rise in employees in the ALL 50,000 to ALL 70,000 wage bands, an increase of more than 81% for wages above ALL 120,000, and VAT payments up by about ALL 79 million, or 22.7%, from the previous year.