Tourism in Costa Rica
Tourism in Costa Rica has been one of the fastest growing economic sectors of the country[2] and by 1995 became the largest foreign exchange earner.
[15][16] The country also has plenty of beaches, both in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, within short travel distances, and also several volcanoes that can be visited with safety.
By the early 1990s, Costa Rica became known as the poster child of ecotourism,[16] with tourist arrivals reaching an average annual growth rate of 14% between 1986 and 1994.
[19] The number of tourists visiting Costa Rica surpassed the 2 million milestone in 2008, and tourist-related income reached US$2.1 billion that year.
[23] A historical record of 2.5 million international visitors arrived in the country in 2014, up 4.1% year-on-year, and the corresponding receipts rose to US$2.636 billion in 2014, up 8.3% from the previous year.
[33] According to a 2006 survey, visitors from the Caribbean Basin and South America travel to Costa Rica mainly for business or professional purposes, while a majority of Americans, Canadians and Europeans visit the country for leisure.
[5] The following table presents a comparison of Costa Rica's tourism industry performance with selected countries from the Caribbean Basin and South America, including Bahamas, Cuba, and several of the top ten Latin American countries according to their 2013 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index (TTCI), which are competitors in the nature travel market segment.
[37] In recent years, several of Costa Rica's top travel service providers have been internationally recognized for their commitment to planet-positive tourism.
[46] CST hopes to encourage businesses to become sustainable in a variety of ways, including using recycled products, implementing water and energy saving devices, properly disposing and treating waste, conserving and expanding Costa Rica's forests, and developing better systems of information management.
In 2005, Costa Rica’s oxcarts with beautiful colors and designs were recognized by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and declared them to be an Intangible World Heritage.
[52] In addition to the artifacts there is information about some of Costa Rica’s political history including involvement in Civil Wars and its well-known Presidents.
It runs from the Atlantic Ocean (Caribbean coast), the southernmost part of the Tortuguero Canals, up the mountain and through indigenous territory near the Barbilla National Park and through valleys and mountain ranges of the central region of the country, just south of the Turrialba and Irazu Volcanos and through the Los Santos coffee region down to the Pacific coast in Quepos.
The award selection is based on surveys among the magazine's subscribers, who evaluate the resort's quality of rooms, service, food, location, design, and activities.
Costa Rica, together with Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile, is among the Latin America countries that have become popular destinations for medical tourism.
[62][68] Foreign patients also find lower-priced nonsurgical procedures and tests, as an example, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in Costa Rica costs from $200 to $300, compared to more than $1,000 in the United States.
[63] In many beach areas, but especially in the towns of Tamarindo and Jacó, a real estate boom took place when many foreigners from developed countries began buying beachfront properties and building holiday and vacation houses and condominiums.
[16] Also, the lack of planning for these developments is having a negative social impact on small communities, as in some cases they are forced to move to places with less adequate infrastructure and where not enough job opportunities exist.
[69] Also there have been isolated controversies regarding the site location and construction of hotels and beach resorts invading the 50 metres (160 ft) protected maritime public zone; also a case of one hotel located within a protected area; and a few cases of resort development with severe negative impacts to existing flora and fauna, by dumping construction wastes damaging coral reefs or filling mangroves.
[16] As a result of these and other similar controversies, the Environment Law 7554 was passed in 1995 to require environmental impact studies before a hotel or any other development is authorized to begin construction.
In 2007 the Constitutional Court order the national and 34 local governments to stop dumping sewage into the Río Grande de Tárcoles, to restore the watershed to its unpolluted condition and to adopt an integrated solution to the wastewater problem.
