1.6 Limitations of the study

In order to address these questions, the objectives of this research study are formulated below:

a) Understanding the tourism challenges in Albanian tourism, possibilities and capacities regarding tourism sector. b) Identifying strategic steps to meet the needs for enhancing the accommodation capabilities in national level. c) Analyse the features of tourism, identify the significant typologies in historic timeline and their contribution to tourism development, with a wide focus on the communist era and post-communist period and a guided attention towards the typology of city hotels d) Exploring the architectural language, design and perception of the Defining principles for further hotel design based on a model of a typological analysis.

1.6 Limitations of the study

a) Limitation of data related to the tourism development Since Tourism is considered a new industry in Albania, there are manifested several constrains and limitations during this research. Having the component of informality still present in the overall tourism sector, including accommodation has inevitably limited the identification of the touristic settlements and specifically the process of studying of the typologies and achieving accurate data regarding the offer of accommodation. From the touristic data point of view, there is only the National Institute of Statistics3 in Albania which can offer statistical data regarding the number of tourists in Albania, the most visited regions and the needs for accommodation.

b) The ‘informality’ factor as a distortive element in accommodation structures

3 From now on NIS