The Costa Rica Tourism Board succeeded in its plan to lure more travellers from Europe with an aim to check dependence from the United States market.
Having said that, this strategy has not only added a diversification to potential markets but also gone ahead to trigger a slump in the number of US tourists arriving in the nation.
A drop of 2% in the initial semester of 2017 (ascending from 709,317 to 695,561) has the Costa Rican Hotels’ Chamber (CCH) quite concerned.
This is because the occupation has nosedived by about 5% as compared to the same period last year. The CCH had conducted a survey among 78 hotels. And, the occupation indicated an average for the country of nearly 553.% (that was about 5% less than in 2016). Moreover, there was also a massive drop in the last two months of high season.
March figures had reached just 75.4% and April, 66.7%.
The Caribbean had registered merely 42% occupation and Puntarenas, an alarming 51% of demand.
Furthermore the expectations do not wear a positive spectacle since September and October are truly quite low in terms of the tourism industry. As per Priscila Solano who is the president of the Guanacaste Tourism Chamber, certain regions of Guanacaste occupation had slumped by as much as 30%, impacting various types of business right from one to five star hotels.
Though the change of government in the US affects tourism to some extent, various entities feel that government has utilized resources in drawing European tourists and neglected the main market for the country of USA.
The Costa Rican Tourism Board has determined that the European tourist numbers had grown by 8.4% in the first semester of 2017.
This marks an interesting market for Costa Rica since they generally tend to stay longer in the nation on account of the travelling distance. But then, it also seems that many of these tourists prefer residing in hostels and even leverage Airbnb and similar services.
