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Cross Culture Lab Albania Brings Tourism to the Children

Altin Vogli, Managing Director at Cross Culture Lab Albania, helps bring new technologies to tourism, culture, youth and education.

Altin allows others to get a better picture of what Albania really looks like through the use of new visual and video technologies.

Altin is a part of our Travel Massive Albania chapter and we wanted to ask him a few questions to get a better understanding as to how Cross Culture Lab is helping support the future of sustainable tourism.

Here were his answers! 

What is your initiative about? Who does it help?

We just finished a project with the Albanian Ministry of Culture. We used virtual reality to bring our National Museum and Arts Gallery to 9th graders in a couple of cities. They were not able to travel to the capital to see them for themselves, so we brought the museum and the gallery to them. We are hoping to expand this concept to different cities, and bring other things for students to see.

This year, for example, we will show the students how people lived during the communist regime, touring them around prisons and camps where political prisoners were kept. The goal is to provide 360 degrees and virtual reality to the classrooms so that children can better understand the past and the future. Education will be more immersive and much more vivid.

Our next focus will be in the tourism industry. We want to show prospective tourists that Albania is not only known for its beaches, but also the mountains in the winter, the valleys with deep and clear rivers, and the ancient ruins and castles.

What inspired you to create this initiative?

A friend of mine from Silicon Valley came up with the idea. Albania is really pretty with the mountains and the sea, but the tourism industry only last year started to pick up on this. Tourism is a long-term venture, and you can’t be in it for a quick buck. It takes patience, the right know-how and the mentality and desire to provide the best service.

Is there a unique story of how it came to be?

I met Ron (the California guy) by complete accident. He was having coffee at a café nearby and was talking to a friend of mine, and the rest, as they say, is history.

How can someone help or get involved?

They can contact me at altinvogli@hotmail.com or al@xclab.org. We need to have more HMDs so we can place them in our tourism offices here in Tirana. Anyone that wants to visit Albania can take a virtual tour of the place first, and if they want to see the place live, then, of course, we provide the means to do just that.

Why do you attend Travel Massive events?

We attend Travel Massive events to get the latest travel news and to understand the latest trends in travel. Here in Tirana, we have been to several events, met and talked to a lot of people whose main objective now is to keep this country clean, use renewable resources, educate people on providing the best service they can, so tourists enjoy themselves and bring even more of their family and friends.


Travel Start-Up is a monthly series that profiles unique online travel start-ups in the Travel Massive community around the world. You can connect with Altin on Travel Massive and Facebook


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