Costa Rica: $2.1B Investment in Tourism

Panama, Monday 27 of November 2006

The Costa Rica province of Guanacaste (North Pacific) will receive in next the three years at least 2.1B dollars of investment in tourist projects, informed the economic weekly magazine yesterday the Financiero. The publication indicated that the money comes from 35 tourist projects as hotels and residences of luxury that have entered operation in the last 24 months or do it within next the three years.

The 2.1B dollars of investment that will receive Guanacaste are equivalent to more of the double from which it receives every Costa Rica year in Direct Foreign Investment. According to information compiled by the weekly magazine, in next the 20 years in Guanacaste to at least 28 hotels and 9 thousand 700 residences for people of high spending power will be constructed, in their majority American retired. The investment in these projects comes mainly from the United States but, also are involved Costa Rican investors, Germans, South Africans, Japanese, Mexican and Italian.

At the Guanacaste present time it has 6 thousand 724 rooms in 347 hotels and this year the construction in the zone arrives at 947 thousand 973 square meters, which represents a growth of 66% with respect to the last year. Between the powerful international hotel companies that or work in the zone or will begin to operate in the next months they emphasize Four Seasons, Holiday Inn, JW Marriot and Hyatt. Guanacaste is the province with greater tourist development of Costa Rica thanks to its beautiful beaches, rich culture, national parks and the proximity between attractive like forests, volcanos, beaches and tourism of adventure. The tourism is one of the main sources of income of the country.