Tourism

The Tico Times recently wrote an article on the lack of effort Costa Ricans are putting fourth towards tourism. This article was named Grim Tourism Outlook has Silver Lining and was written by Patrick Fitzgerald.

According to Fitzgerald, tourism accounts for more than 500,000 jobs in Costa Rica. With the economy the way it is and tourism being one of the key factors to enhancing economic growth, the Costa Rican Government should be focusing on this issue more.

Costa Rica has always had a reputation of being a relaxing, breathtaking, environmentally friendly escape from everyday life. However, Costa Rica is not keeping up with the environmentally friendly part of it. Fitzgerald mentions how Tamarindo has been having sanitation problems. They are also becoming overdeveloped.

“Some of the smarter countries are stepping up. If we stay back, we're going to lose out," Bary Roberts said. This is true, there are many other developing countries that have a lot of beauty to them and if they are smart about it Costa Rica could fall behind and these countries could become the new relaxing, breathtaking, environmentally friendly getaway.

What they really need to do is improve their e-commerce and start to market online more. It is reported that 58% of Costa Rican tourists purchase their travel packages online. This is more than half of the people that are traveling there. I am even thinking of traveling to Costa Rica this summer. I have been doing a lot of research about vacations in Costa but I have not found a huge amount of advertisments. As a college student I am unable to purchase an all-inclusive, 5 star hotel stay. I need something a little less expensive but still desirable. They need to advertise this!

Alberto Franco

“Rather than fixating on a word to define the economy, we should focus on working to restore growth and improving quality of life for everyone who lives here,”Alberto Franco, an economist from the consulting firm Ecoanálisis said.

This is the most insightful thing that I have heard anyone say about the economic crisis we are in right now. Everyone keeps fixating on whether or not to call it a recession. Here in the U.S. we have come to terms with the fact that we are in a recession however, the Ticos are not using that term yet, but are debating on it. I agree with Franco and instead of focusing on the terminology, we should focus on what to do to improve the job market and most importantly stimulate the economy with bringing in more tourism. Tourism is at the top for foreign exchange in Costa Rica. Right now Costa Rica needs to work on some kind of way to bring in tourists. It'll be hard to do because the U.S. isn't spending any money on vacations right now but they need an incentive.

The economy

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Costa Rica's economy has a huge dependence on tourism. In the region of Central America, Costa Rica is the most visited nation. Costa Rica had 1.9 million visitors in 2007 which brought in $1.9 billion in foreign exchange for them that year. This is more money than the export of coffee and bananas combined. Coffee and bananas are the other prime exports produced by Costa Rica.