Explore Nevila Dudaj's journey in the Tourism Industry

Thank you so much for having me. I can’t wait to get started.

Yeah, it means a lot, especially in my case. Well, I think that rootless to me means great flexibility and adaptability. These are the features that I mostly think of when I hear the word rootless.

More than 22 years ago in Albania. Everything started there. I never expected or imagined that I would be an entrepreneur one day because I have been born and raised in Tirana, Albania and during my childhood, we were still under the communist regime. So you could never think of something like this could happen. So, being here today is really incredible. It’s been quite a journey for me and things have started early, actually. So I’ve seen myself studying a lot, reading a lot of books during my childhood and my high school years. Then I studied economics and law at university. So I have two degrees and that was so meaningful and helpful to me for my future.

I still see myself there. My brother used to read with me, we used to read a lot of books. We wanted to see what was going on outside Albania at that time because you were not allowed to travel, you were not allowed to go anywhere until 1991. When democracy came, you could not go anywhere and you could travel by reading. So I read a lot of books, thousands of books, and my mom and dad, they were always ready to give us everything they could to make us feel. They were so happy that we were studying, doing great in school, reading those books and going to different courses of that time to the library and so on. So that was my childhood. We were always reading and studying, reading and studying all the time, but it was not bad. That was beautiful because we had our own world.

I wanted to travel so much. Well, at the beginning, I also wanted to be a doctor or lawyer. For example, I remember myself in the first grade in school when I wanted to become a teacher. So, I started to rate all my friends, their homework. I was copying my teacher. Then I decided to become a doctor afterward and then I Changed my mind again. Then the big change actually happened when I was ten, 12 years old after the fall of the communist regime. We were listening to the Voice of America on the radio and Elez Biberaj was speaking. He was the one who completely changed my perception of what’s going on outside Albania and what’s going on in the U.S. So if I love this country now and I’ve loved this country for a long time now, it’s because of him. When I met with him, I told him that he was my hero. So, I heard about democracy, I heard about America. I heard about great things happening here.

Actually, that happened before I decided to be an entrepreneur. So that was because of my husband’s family, my father in law. He was a businessman. When I saw how things in their family used to work, everything changed for me because my parents were both engineers. My brother was an engineer, so we didn’t have any entrepreneurs in our family and when I saw that, I was stunned. It was so different.

I was a 22-23 year old girl. My father in law, my brother in law and my husband were all entrepreneurs at that moment. So they had just started their businesses at that time and that was a big change actually. So being there at that moment was really life changing. I graduated from economics, from law school and I didn’t know what to do with my life, I didn’t know what was my future. What was my real passion? I did not know it. I found that out.

So they were sitting together and discussing work, about what to do. Then suddenly the opportunity to privatize the Adriatik Hotel came up and we went together to see it in Durres. So we are from Tirane and we have to go there to explore what you can do. I was so excited and I loved the place so much because my childhood memories were precisely there. So we couldn’t step in at the Adriatik Hotel because it was forbidden for Albanians to stay there before ‘91 – ‘92. Afterwards we were allowed to go to the other hotels in that area. In ‘99, by the end of ‘99, we went to see this opportunity, to check on that with my father in law, my husband and my brother in law and things changed so quickly.

Well, actually, they used to have their own meetings as men and I was always very curious, asking them questions or just trying to enter the conversation. I had just graduated so I knew a lot about business. I had a degree in economics and theoretically I knew things. So I was aware that I would help them because they had the passion to do things but I had the knowledge and I had been studying to do that. So I gave them proof that I was good at what I was telling them and that was how I won my place.

Yes. A consultant of the beginning, not a partner. They didn’t want a partner so I was consulting them, I was working with them. I did a lot of things from the beginning, I was also translating because I speak languages. So it was big for us and we had to deal with different construction companies and architects from outside Albania because in 1999 – 2000 it was impossible to find architects or people for a hotel or somebody who could build a hotel and everything else. So that should have been brought to international and European standards. It was a challenge because we found the property basically ruined. After ‘97, things had changed. We still have pictures from that time. So, that property had a lot of potential. I saw that potential, I loved the place and I was sure we were going to do it. I could see five stars and was so excited.

You should go for it. Just don’t stop. If somebody tells you this is not the place for you to be or that women don’t talk when men talk, don’t listen to that. Just go ahead and express what you think. If you are good at what you do or if you believe in yourself and you believe in your knowledge, just go for it.

It was a difficult and long journey. I was taking care of every single email sent; imagine sending emails or using the Internet in 2000. It was pretty difficult using dial up. You had to stop the phone and use the line in order to get connected to the internet. Things were never ending and I had two little kids at that time. I was working during the night until 2 a.m., 4 a.m. in the morning and then the next morning I was taking care of the kids. I had my office in my house. So, I was using a specific place in my house to have my computer to do the research and find groups to work in the hotel, air conditioning, furniture or whatever was necessary. So it was a huge project. I don’t know how I did it.

On July, 31st 2003, we opened the doors, which was a soft opening. We were not too ready to open, but we started because we had to start. Before that, one year earlier, in 2002, we decided to hire an experienced general manager, because I was not experienced. I didn’t study that. So I was trying to find online courses and I attended an online course at Cornell University. It was a three month certificate for the general manager. So I wanted to know how and what I should do to hire a general manager, what this person should have looked like. So, we were exploring opportunities and after taking this challenging online course, we started to check for them. A lot of candidates applied for the job. I remember there were around 66 of them and we picked the three best ones and we invited them to Albania. So, I was taking care of the process, I was interviewing them, I was doing everything like an H.R. It was difficult but we found the best one. The first GM Jim was Peter Bartman. He was from Germany and he was really great. He was a seasoned GM with 30 years of experience. He was great and very charismatic. He was a nice person, very flexible, and he was taking care of all the details. He understood the conditions of Albania at that time. So we didn’t have specialized people or proper schools, many people were immigrating. So, I was translating for him and adapting his ideas because he was trying to hire people the normal way he did in Europe. So, he was trying to find the way to publish the announcement in the newspaper or somewhere and to leave an email where people should send their CVs but in 2002 and 2003 it was almost impossible for people to have emails. It was difficult. So I found another way of doing that through the local TV, Teuta TV. I’m very grateful to Bashkim Hoxha who was a journalist at that time. He used to have a TV program every morning at 7 a.m. He had this sort of morning show talking to people program in the morning every morning. So he was very influential, very powerful in Durres. So I picked him and asked him for a favor. I didn’t know him. I just went there and asked him for a favor. I told him we are rebuilding and refurbishing the Adriatik Hotel and we needed his help. We wanted to hire people and asked if he could help us, tell us something about this on his show and then we could leave forms at the TV station building so people could go there and they fill them up with pictures as well, because we needed to talk to people. In hospitality, it’s important to know how people look. He was very open to this idea. He told me to come one day and talk in front of a camera, do a little ad so I could invite people myself. So I just went ahead, told people what they should expect from the job at the Adriatik. I did that and it worked. We had more than 300 people applying for jobs for the positions we had. We had a lot of positions open and working as a five star hotel was necessary according to the ratios. We had 770 rooms and we should have had at least 140 people hired for summer. So, we did that. – Nevila Dudaj

So I was promoted to executive director of the hotel because of my job as H.R. and project manager and everything else. As the executive director, I had this general manager who was really tough on me, sweet on people, but tough on me because he wanted me to succeed and to be able to manage the hotel because he trusted me so much. I was the age of his daughter and he was seeing his daughter in everything I did. So, I was coming every day from Tirana and going back to Triana every day. I also had two small children.

So I saw precisely what I imagined before we opened the doors. It was really clear to me what I was expecting. I was expecting a five star hotel similar or exactly the same as a sister hotel in Italy or in Greece but located in Durres. So we had everything. We didn’t miss anything service wise or in furniture, design and everything else. We hired the best architects from the best studio in Turkey who used to build in Antalya. At that time, Antalya was on top and the best collaboration we could have was with Turkey.

Well, people were amazed to see what was going on there. It was a huge success because something like that was missing and we were the first ones to do it. So, we were the trailblazers of hospitality at that moment, in 2003 but with history starting from 1957 when the hotel was opened for the first time. So we wanted to do this. We wanted to have a new property but showing the oldest hospitality in Albania because that’s what we were.

Foreigners, international organizations like OSCE or embassies. Our hotel was designed to bring in leisure and business. So we were designed like that. We had and we still have event rooms, conference rooms, and we have hosted a lot of important events of prime ministers of the Balkan countries or other prime ministers who came to visit in Albania and stayed in our hotel. So we were pretty famous.

At that time you could not imagine a woman working in hotels. I was meeting with our guests and they thought that maybe I was the secretary or the assistant of the general manager because they expected to meet a man. So that’s why we had Peter, because he was the man, he was the general manager, he was a foreigner. He was the one they were expecting to see. That’s why I made this choice, they were not ready for me.

In January of 2004, I actually had to quit because there’s travel every day. My daughter was five, My son was three years old. I was staying with them during the time I was working for the hotel from my office at home but when the hotel opened, I had to go every day back and forth and I could not even see them, I couldn’t stay with them. So I missed them so much and I felt I had to be there with them. So this was a short period of time, six months, but I couldn’t do it. I quit and I went back to Tirane to have the best time with my kids.

Well, they still had the GM. Then my brother in law went there to be a director and my father in law took over the hotel after Peter left in 2005 then. tSo my father in law was running the hotel. He was the CEO and he hired another manager to work there. So, things were going great for that time. In the meanwhile, I was in Tirana and started another business because I could stop. So once you have this virus, it doesn’t go away. I was enjoying the time with my kids and being a mom more than being an entrepreneur, but I couldn’t stay like that and I was trying to figure out what to do. I got an idea after I went to a salon because I was trying to lose some weight. There were some new salons in Albania which started to open in 2004 and I had a really bad experience there. So when I went there, they had no customer related skills, they were not taking care of you, they were not explaining what they were doing to you, they were promising things and they were not able to see what’s going on with you. So the experience was bad. Thinking about that, I was very much interested in beauty and keeping your skin healthy and fresh. I thought that I needed to check on the opportunity to open something myself but I was unsure. So, I went to a beauty fair in Milan,my first one and I saw what was going on in that industry. I took a lot of information there and I sold the products. I sold machines, new things in the market. I was thinking and doing my calculation of what to do next. So, I found an interesting Italian company, and the founder of the company was an engineer who had discovered the electrodes system for weight loss or muscle training. He was eighty years old when I spoke to him and he was fascinating. He was amazing. Gaincarlo Leti was his name. He has since passed away but he did invent many machines which were incredible. So, you could do a session of 20 minutes – 25 minutes, something like that and afterwards you would lose weight. You could measure yourself and would find out that you are two or three or five centimeters slimmer. Everything was so clean, clear and efficient and I loved that. I forgot to mention that I had been to the USA before that and I came here. So 2001 was my first time coming here and experiencing amazing customer service at Starbucks. People were smiling and treating you well, they were nice to you because they wanted you to come back. So that was a huge difference. I wanted that to happen in Albania, in Tirana and I wanted to be the first one to give this experience to women. Well, they were men interested too, but the mentality was not there yet. So women were more interested but I didn’t want them to get cheated like myself, to go somewhere and end up with nothing after spending money. The machines were perfect, everything was perfect. So, I was preparing things and trying to find the best location for my business. I found a beautiful space on the second floor of a building in the middle of the “Bllok” area, a beautiful space. The machines were called VipLine so I did not think twice about the name of the Center. That salon is still existing now. I sold the business at some point before coming here, actually, and the business is still going on really well today.

So, I was taking care of my saloon. Everything was going perfectly well. We were very successful, so we got a huge respected reputation in Tirana. Everybody would come to lose weight, to have a facial, beautiful facial without any noise, with relaxing music. So you could lay down and we would take care of you. So all the employees at the salon were professionals. They had their training in Italy. We had a doctor among the personnel. So we had everything, we were taking care of every single person. They had their own files, so we knew everything about them, whether they were allergic, what their birthday was, everything. We were sending messages for their birthday and they were surprised. We did that for a long time. So I was doing this personally. I was doing this on a daily basis and they were amazed by the service there. They were so happy about that. It was something unique in Albania.

Well, the next idea was always inspired by the US. This inspiration, everything I had done so far comes from America, of course; my certificate in Cornell, the things I have seen here, the hotels I was envisioning at the beginning. So I had something in front of me so I always had my vision right, because of that. So here the customer service was excellent. Afterwards the salon was perfect, up and running by itself. I started to think about another option which was Century 21, the real estate company. It was before the bubble, in 2007. My husband and brother in law were partners with me at that time and we bought the master franchise.

No, it was too early. It was a very good business idea because we wanted things to go official. So we didn’t like the idea of having people negotiating behind your back and hiding things from buyers or hiding the problems with documents. So, I was hoping to find justice somehow but it took too long and we sold before we moved to the US.

We opened five offices in the first year, so we were successful so It was not bad. No, it was great but at a certain point things started to slow down because of the mentality. Many people would not go to an office. They would do transactions someplace else. So this started to happen and afterwards, it was time when we started to think about moving to the US so I had to quit that because I had to come here more often and think about my kids’ future. That was in 2015 – 2016.

Well, my father in law was taking care of that and we were pushing actually strongly because the hotel was not unique anymore. It was not the only one because other hotels had been built. So, it was not the only 5 star, it was not the only one keeping that position. It was doing great, but it was not in the best shape. So, we wanted things to change. My father in law told me that since we were criticizing him, we should just go and take care of it because he was going back and forth from Tirana every day in his old age. I took my husband with me because I couldn’t do it myself. It was impossible because the world of construction, hospitality is very masculine. I couldn’t be there on my own without having someone to support me in other areas. So I couldn’t handle the construction part, for example,and the hotel at that point needed so much to be refurbished, to change furniture, to change everything because it was looking old. They had some renovations on the way, but the design interiors have changed a lot. People were expecting something different. So we started to do this and I needed my husband to help me. He’s good at it and he took care of that. We did a list of what we were changing and renovating. So we started doing that and we finished in 2017 actually.

Yes. So we did a great job. It was not only the renovation, but we changed the mentality. We changed the employees because they were not fitting our mentality. That’s my problem, the customer service service in general. So, they were not doing things right and we had to change. It was hard to do it. We had to fire people because they were not matching our vision, our expectations. They were not prepared to do their job but I gave them a chance to change. However, there were some of them that didn’t change. Some of them are still working with us today, so they have been working with us for 20 years and they’re the best. They understood what we were expecting from them.

You have to feel at home, first of all. This is the first thing that my guests tell me. They tell me they went to the hotel, everybody was greeting them and smiling at them, asking if they needed something, if there was something we could have done for them and so on. Our guests always find a welcoming plate to their room. We used to do that since 2016 while we were innovating. We were doing this partially floor by floor. We started surprising our guests. They were coming to a room and the room was looking perfect. The rooms are very clean, beautiful, the colors are nice, and inviting. Everything looks nice and meanwhile the people who are hosting you are very hospitable, they love you being there. Sometimes it happens that you step into a property, which could be beautiful, well designed, everything looking perfect, but people are not smiling at you. They don’t make you feel welcomed.

Yes, we started preparing pie, byrek, donuts, traditional Albanian donuts. It was a challenge for the chefs because they said that people come here to have excellent things in the five star hotel and that’s what they should find, the food should be spectacular looking. I insisted that people like simple things to make them feel at home. What do you cook at home? Petulla, byrek. Everybody started to copy us. They were offering breakfast in Durres and Tirana and people still do that. I was always doing things as I was expecting that service or employees in other hotels to behave with me.

The same thing I told you right now. If you go to another hotel or in a restaurant or even a bar and somebody throws the coffee at you, how would you feel? He’s not giving you that coffee for free. So he should be polite at least because you’re buying coffee, you’re paying for that. So imagine someone who comes to our hotel and is expecting you to smile, is expecting you to enjoy the coffee or asking whether you like the coffee, the desert, the food. So if it looks fair to you, you should do it because they are spending their savings to come and spend holidays here. So imagine yourself saving the money and going somewhere where the staff is treating you really badly. Think about what you can do to treat them the way you want to be treated.

So they were people who used to work in the hotel from a long time and they were feeling that they were doing things right and believing that they knew how to treat people. However, that was not the way I was expecting them to treat people. So I went there and made some changes.

They are everything to me. They’re like a family. I consider them a family. They have vacations, they have the opportunity to go and explore other hotels. They go to see what’s going on around the world in Italy, in Turkey, Greece and they come back or go to represent the hotel in travel shows. I send them on purpose. They should go there, do their job, but at the same time, they should stay in a five star hotel. Then, they come back and give all the staff their impressions and feedback. How was that hotel compared to ours? They always say that we treat people so well.

So things are great. The clientele has changed a lot because I made some changes. It was necessary to cut off all the agencies who were trying to take advantage of the hotel. They were buying low and selling high to clients and then the quality was not there. So that’s why I came up with the idea to open this company and start selling to Americans. I was talking to a lot of Americans at that time and they were surprised to see my business cards. The hotel on the back of my business card and people would ask how much we charge for a night and they were interested because it seemed so cheap and the hotel looked so beautiful to them. They started asking where and when they could go there. We were in collaboration with different travel agents in Albania but they would put the guests inside their buses and they were not treating them right. They were not doing what people wanted to do, they went to explore something and they were following a specific itinerary, they were rushed. I always ask my guests how their trip was, how their experience was, and they thought it was nice, but disliked the lack of communication and broken english. They were disappointed at some point, so they didn’t give any star. So, Adriatic Tours was born. So it started inside the hotel and here in the US. So, we were doing both.

So, nobody believed that Americans would come to Albania for vacation. Nobody believed in me and I feel so proud I did it. I’m really proud of what I did because we take care of every single detail so we don’t leave things to chance, and we try to be very organized. We are very good at what we do. So we take care of our clients from the first moment they want to work with us or go to Albania. So we find what they’re interested in religious tours, archeological tours, historic tours, cultural tours, it depends. So we bring them individually, we bring their groups, we have contracts with different tour operators here in the United States. So we deal with them a lot and we have never, ever had a bad review or a bad feedback from any of the Americans we ever brought to Albania.

It’s 2018 and slowly, I’m becoming a partner. So, my father in law decided to step away from the business and the business is mine and my husband’s at this point. So he decided that we should be the ones to pass the torch to because we gave him proof that we knew how to do that and he was proud.

I think it was 2018 when I became General Manager. I’m still the general manager there and I’m CEO and founder of Adriatic Tours here in the US.

That’s my drive, that’s why I do it. I love challenging things. I love challenging or difficult problems to solve. I love to solve them my way and prove that I know what I’m doing.

A lot of times, yes. Many times I was doing desperate things that were not going the way I wanted them to go. It was difficult. I was feeling like I wanted to quit, but I learned my lesson because when I had those ideas or mixed feelings it was because I loved my business, I put myself and my heart in that. So, I’m a very sensible person, I feel what I do and I love it. If I love it, I will continue to do it. It’s like your kids; you love them the same. When things were difficult, I stepped back, I would take some time to cool off and to see the big picture and probably take some days off, weeks off. Sometimes I just distance myself even though I love to talk to people. I love meeting people, I love being amongst people. I’m a people’s person, but sometimes you need to step back, see what’s going on and then you realize that that picture misses something. That’s the point. Then, you go back there and you fix things. So that’s my advice to entrepreneurs who want to quit. Every time you want to quit, just step back, take some time, think about it, have a vacation, stay with your family, just nurture yourself. I go to retreats, for example. I’m also a spiritual person, I love to learn more and grow from a spiritual point of view. So it helps you a lot, really. I love meditating, doing yoga, and walking in nature. There’s always a solution. I always think that.

Well, the first thing I would say is flexibility. You have to be flexible always, especially in the hospitality and travel business. Be adaptable, flexible and open minded. Sometimes you learn from somebody’s mistakes, sometimes it is the opposite. So you learn from your employees, from their experiences. You have to be open to learning every day. The most important thing is to be persistent and not quit easily. So, you have to be persistent.

It’s crucial. It’s everything because now influencers are a big thing. So if an influencer comes to your hotel and spends a night or two there and they have millions of followers, they can change everything. So I believe in real pictures and videos, untouched. This is very important. Sometimes, I get criticized about that because the Instagram of Adriatik, is not the same compared to another five star hotel or something like that. So, you see people giving testimonials, real people who have real vacations. They’re just checking out and before they do that, the front office agents ask them how their stay was and if they’re happy with everything, if they have something they think needs to be improved. So we give them forms to fill out at the reception and then by the end, they ask them if they have something to say about the hotel. We will publish this to our social media. It’s very simple, we don’t give them anything in order to do that. They just do it. We always welcome critics and always welcome people to share their suggestions or things they think we have to improve. It’s an opportunity, but I really stick to real things. I love to have real things, real sunsets, no filters, real food, pictures, experiences, maybe something which doesn’t look that perfect, but it’s perfect in itself because the location of the hotel being right on the beach, it gives you a lot more. So there are a lot of people who are posting themselves without telling them to do anything. They’re tagging us and we repost what they do. We keep it simple, we don’t complicate things. That’s why we don’t hire a special photographer or if you do prefer to go there and capture beautiful moments you can do that. But the best moment is a real surprise, people enjoy that. So if I am a guest and like the sunset from my window, I just take a picture or a video and I post it.

Huge. So if you are any kind of entrepreneur, in any business, networking is the main thing. It’s very important. The people around you are very important to your success. They will lift you like you lift them. So for me, the important thing is that I’m always there to lift other women to succeed, to support them to start new business or to change their career and to do more and to do their best for them. This is the same for me. I still have this huge group of people in my network who are supporting me every step. So, I’m so blessed and so happy to have them. I consider that they are not just people who work with you or collaborate with you or are partnered somehow by your business, but they are friends. They support you and you do the same. It’s a huge circle. I believe that if you love and support people, it will come back to you. I’m really happy to have that in my life.

I’m reading a book about skills from Anthony Melchiorri. Anthony Melchiorri is a personality in the hospitality business. He was my inspiration. He used to run the “Hotel Impossible” series. It was on the Travel Channel. I saw that show many years ago and he was doing the same things I used to do at that time. I’ve actually met with Anthony. I invited him to Albania in 2018. So I met my idol and he was amazing. He was amazed to come to Albania. He was amazed to see the Adriatik Hotel. I was asking him what we can improve or his advice about the hotel. He replied he would change nothing. He said everything was perfectly fine. He was someone who inspired me to do better every day and now he published this very interesting book I’m reading.

Well, you should look inside yourself first and see what your real passion is. Sometimes we mix things up and it’s hard to find your passion but once you find it, don’t ever let it go. So, Fight for that and do the best you can to keep it. That’s my message.