Costa Rica’s Tourism Reported First-Half Spike

A grand total of 583,937 foreign tourists arrived in Costa Rican airports during the first half of the year, up 28 percent from the first six months of 2003.

Would this increment continue at a such a white-heat pace, tourism authorities in the country are expecting to put up numbers in the double digits by the end of the ongoing year and rake in some $1.4 billion worth of revenues, nearly $200 million more than in 2003.

The apogee of the Central American region as an international travel destination, coupled with a larger volume of airlines and flights, explain away the increase in the number of visitors, sources from the sector said this week.

According to the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT), the coming of new airlines and the addition of flights staved off a gridlock in terms of plane seat availability that was actually raising hurdles to the possibility of meeting a much higher demand in the U.S. and Europe, the country’s two top markets.

Five new air carriers in 2003 and a couple more this year joined the dozen airlines that used to fly to Costa Rica in 2002.

Air Canada, Italy-based Laura, Spain’s Air Madrid, and American West and US Airways from the United States are among the newcomers.

Last year, 1,238,692 tourists visited the Central American nation, up 11.2 percent from 2002. These sunbathers spent more than $1.2 billion in the country.

Nearly half country’s tourists hail from North America, a figure that added a 20 percent increase in 2003 compared to the previous year, the ICT reported.

European sunbathers accounted for 15.5 percent of the total, up 21.6 percent from 2002, while the number of Central American visitors (comprising a quarter of the total) dropped 2.4 percent.

Estimates have it that foreign tourists fork over an average $100 a day and stay as many as ten days in the country.