"Maybe his lawyer could get the venue changed to Albania?"
Oh gosh no - Albania is a mess. Crazy language issues, the government ran a pyramid/Ponzi banking scam that destroyed the miniscule wealth of most of the citizens (so they will nott be too kind to a Ponzi-schemer), and it's legal system is a mess. Plus there are no good local counsel there. Mostly Muslim. Worse, there is nothing to do for fun in Tirane.
Much better to choose Croatia as a venue. Beautiful country, decent cities, nightlife, some quality hotels and restaurants. I'd pick Croatia over Albania every single time.
I learned a trick from a mentor and I've also seen it in use by many others. Here it is: when you draft a commercial contract and need to include a provision for international arbitration, select a place you'd like to spend 6-25 weeks. My mentor always chose Paris. For sure, one of those contracts had an international dispute and he wound up getting to spend about two months (split over about 9 months) in Paris for the IARC arbitration. Another contract between a Japanese company a US-domiciled company specified Honolulu as the location for an arbitration if there was a dispute in a certain set of topics (e.g., IP) - sure enough, there was a dispute and he gott to hang in Hawaii for it. He also got to hang in Hong Kong for another matter.
Almost nobody objects to picking a neutral forum country at the stage of drafting and signing contracts. Only very experienced CFOs in multinationals with a LOT of international litigation experience ever object to an arbitration venue in a draft contract - because they may have the experiences of having to pay hotel and travel expense costs for prior arbitrations (frankly, I've never had anyone object to the choice of venue for arbitration in a draft contract during review). As long as you don't pick a red thumb locale like St. Moritz or Ibiza, nobody ever picks up on that stuff - and the legal counsel representing the other side(s) know this game too and they may, at most, counter back with "I've played all the good golf courses in Oahu, Shajandr-san, would it be OK to change the venue to Kahului, as I've nott played the courses on Maui."
Other variants are that for international arbitration or litigation, parties usually agree to choice-of-law provisions for the dispute to be resolved by, and the contract to be governed by, either UK or US law (or Canadian or Aussie) which have a long established body of English common law applicable to contract interpretation. So, jurisdictions that have a basis in English common law are favored, which is why Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, etc. are good choices for venues.
In my mentor's case, he chose Paris as the locale, butt US law governed the contract, so the IARC arbitrators were US lawyers and everyone gott to hang in Paris while the clients footed the bill. The reason for Paris is that the two contracting parties were a US corp and a UK corp and it made sense to have a neutral forum - the compromise was that US law would govern butt the location would have to be in Europe convenient for the UK company lawyers to attend, so Paris became the location during drafting.
They should have picked Biarritz.
Just some tips for how to make life a little more fun if you have to be away from home for long periods - pick a nice place for the dispute resolution.
I've had to spend a period of 10 weeks in Chicago over a nasty winter on an arbitration. The folks who drafted that contract did so because Ilinois was a neutral forum, Illinois contract law is well-developed, and the AAA is located in Chicago (on Michigan Ave in the Illinois center complex) which was halfway between the parties' HQs (California and New Jersey).
Lesson: always pick a place that doesn't have Siberian-level winters as a possibility!!!
