Tourism in Costa Rica is going through a few growing pains. The tourism industry is the largest contributor to GDP and brings millions of dollars of revenue into the country each year.
The rapid growth in tourism is changing the landscape of areas such as the Pacific coast of Guanacaste, and sadly, the expectation of huge corporate profits has caused the large hotel chains and other businesses to turn a blind eye to the natural environment.
The companies bring revenue to small beachfront communities and the local governments are too ineffective and too primitive to resist the corporate giveaways.
The hotels and condominium owners, especially the big ones, are having to build their own infrastructure such as roads, just so their clients can have access to their facilities.
In the town of Playa del Coco, a half hour from Liberia airport in Guanacaste, the ‘Pacifico’ chain paved a two-mile stretch of road from the downtown to their beachfront facility. This project also has a huge residual benefit since a large subdivision of condominiums; their owners, tenants and the localworkmen use the newly paved road every day.
However, the abundant development in this area is not being controlled by the municipality and the locals, but by the developers, whose main purpose is to exploit an area and to produce profits.
We’ve seen the Caribbean islands deal with unplanned tourism, and local people have watched hopelessly as most of the profits left the islands, with their environments irreparably changed forever. The same thing is happening in Costa Rica.
Basically, you have a lot of local people living in shanty-type houses. Some are situated next to the tourism projects.
These people have lived in Costa Rica for generations, but they have now been marginalized. Tourism development squeezes the local people out, and they eventually have to pay the higher prices because of the tourists.
They are promised jobs in the tourism industry, and it’s true that many of them do benefit, but the people of the country are being taken advantage of.
As you walk the streets of “El Coco” and surroundings you see the contradictions and the shortcomings.
You see million dollar condos and hotels, some with a panoramic view of the ocean, complete with 24 hour security, elaborate gardens, fenced perimeters, swimming pools, casinos, fancy restaurants and much more.
However, in center town and along the beach, there is garbage everywhere, the storefronts are shabby and tacky, the sidewalks are poorly planned and inconsistently paved, and the shoulders of the road become a sea of mud in the rainy season. Yet the local people seem oblivious to the optics.
One thing that impressed us was the high quality of Costa Rican food: fresh food without preservatives, MSG, and artificial sweeteners like aspartame. The meat and fish are fresh each day, fruit and vegetables are locally grown and overall the food tastes much better than in Canada. Basically you can eat nutritious food for 40% less than any equivalent you could buy in Canada.
But things are changing fast in Costa Rica, and the natural environment is already under siege from the big hotel chains, which are showing little consideration for the future. Government health officials closed down hotels in Tamarindo and Playa del Coco after it was discovered that they were knowingly dumping untreated sewage directly into the ocean. The English-language newspaper, the Tico Times, ran several editorials deploring the many violations of the public health laws.
The Occidental Hotel was one of the hotels involved near Playa del Coco, and in late January the hotel was closed and over 400 guests had to be transferred to other hotels while health officials conducted their tests.
The Pacific coast of Costa Rica is an attractive area of the country and has become a popular tourist destination, but the large hotels and condos are shooting themselves in the foot if they think they can ignore health regulations and put tourists and the local people at risk.
More collaborate planning is needed between the locals and the incoming tourism businesses in order to find a favourablebalance in environmental outcomes.
Otherwise, the tourist revenue will seek out safer destinations.
