It's not about not having any experience with the place. Most of the people I know travel to countries where they haven't been before, but would still be reluctant to travel to countries or regions with bad reputations, and that includes Albania, but also the South of Italy, both because of the Mafia.
Actually I don't have to rely on hearsay and personal impressions. Here are the
statistics for the number of foreign tourists by region in Italy. The gap between North and South is colossal. Lombardy gets 22 million visitors, Veneto 13 million, Friuli-Venezia Giulia (not the most interesting region) 11 million, Lazio 11 million, Tuscany 9 million, Liguria 8 million, but the most visited region in the South is Campania (in my opinion possibly the most beautiful region of all Italy) with only 3 million foreign visitors. Calabria, Basilicata and Molise all together get 466,000 visitors per year, three times less than than tiny Aosta Valley!!
If Italian regions were visited for the actual beauty and number of tourist attractions, or even for their climate, Campania and Sicily would be the most visited regions alongside Tuscany and Lazio and well ahead of Friuli or Piedmont. But that's not the case because a majority of Europeans are afraid to go to Southern Italy. It's the sheet beauty of the Bay of Naples or places like Palermo, Taormina, Siracusa or Ragusa, or the unique attraction of Pompeii that motivates some people to overcome their fears and travel there. But the statistics speak for themselves.
As Albania does not have famous places like Pompeii or Siracusa most ordinary people prefer to play it safe and go somewhere else instead. In Albania's case, there is also the poor infrastructure (bad roads, especially compared to nearby Croatia) and subpar quality of medical services by European standards. If Albanians worked on this they could really turn their country in a major tourist destination and make far more money than by growing cannabis.
What Lonely Planet is trying to do is reassure less adventurous travellers that it's ok to visit places like Albania and Kosovo. It's laudable, but I am not sure it will be enough.
Its much more complex than you suggest.
The mafia is not the only reason why people do not visit southern italy as much. Many factors play in.
Some of which are that the germanic and french speaking people comprise a great part of those tourists, and it is easier to go northern and central italy by car, instead of going all the way down south by driving for days or having to catch a plane.
Another factor is that northern italy is much much richer and therefore they have the means to brand themselves properly, so people actually hear about them. So if people have experience or knows someone has experience, or even just sees billboards frequently enough with a specific country, imo it will have a great impact on the number of tourists.
You can see it clearly in the numbers of tourists to albania too. Its not like the mafia has dissappeared, but the number of tourists is rising dramatically. The main reason for this is not the disappearance of the mob, but that only now the investors have started to throw money at us, which we in turn use to brand ourselves to the world.
Another factor as to why we are only now starting to get a rise in tourists, is that until the late 90's albania was a closed country where no one was allowed to enter.
So nostalgia also plays a part in the sense that there is a greater chance that people today will take their kids on vacation to greece or france, because they have good experiences from when they were kids themselves and their parents took them to those places.
No adults today have memories of going to albania when they were kids, simply because it was a closed communist country back when those people were kids. So we are basically starting from scratch in that regard.
You are right about our infrastructure, it is kind of crap some places, compared to other european countries. But they are constantly improving it. And im sure that in a couple of years the case will be a whole different matter.
Just to put into perspective:
When i had to go to Durres in albania from Kosova back in 2007, it took us 12 hours, where we had to ride for hours on mountain roads (sometimes without asphaltation, and it was literally up in the skies), until we reached a river, where we had to jump on a boat for several hours, jump off the boat, and then drive again for hours on pulverized mountain roads.
Then a couple of years later i had to do the same trip. Only this time they had dynamited their way all the way though and made a highway, this time it only took 1.5 hours from Kosova to Durres in albania.
In other words, in 2011 it took only 10% of the time that it took in 2007. A baffling 11 hours less.
Changes like this make a huge difference for tourists.
Dont misunderstand me, i am not denying that the mob can be a factor too when it comes to tourism, although a very small factor. And i think that branding is much much more important. And that the mafia-image of the country is just a remnant of back when we were not branding ourselves, but were branded through foreign tv-series and documentaries. A great example is the Top Gear episode in albania, where basically all they talk about during the whole episode is the mafia. Which i don't find fair, because most people, and especially not tourists will never see a mob member down there. And even if they did they wouldn't notice, because basically all people down there are nice to tourists.
, some more tips for you: