Costa Rica News – Costa Rica is known for its beaches, rain forests, surfing, adventure tours, flora and fauna. The numbers of people coming to Costa Rica continues to grow but at a less exponential rate.
The tourism experts from the National Chamber of Tourism and Costa Rican Hotels warn that we absolutely must increase the amounts spent on promoting tourism if we want Costa Rica to keep up with our neighbors.
In 2015, there is $18 million allocated for this purpose, according to the Costa Rican Tourism Institute. That amount is not even a third of what Panama invests toward the same goal. It’s not a fifth of what Colombia spends.
The budget has improved since 2010, when it was $13 million, but it’s still not enough. Tourism needs to have more of our resources because it’s what gets us through tough times. It is what stimulated the economy after the economic crisis of 2008, for example.
If Costa Rica promote’s more and emphasize on North America, South America, Europe, Russia and China, the economy will surely benefit once again.
But will the government see the importance f of this marketing. From my experience in Costa Rica many businesses do not understand the importance of marketing, advertising and branding.
In many cases they base their businesses decisions on the fact that they are making money with the same marketing budget as previous years, although they have increased competition due to more competitors going after the limited tourist market. But this is the “Pura Vida” mentality. “We are making enough to support our lifestyle, why spend more and increase profits?”
It is about branding yourself and making yourself standout from the other companies or in this case countries that are fighting for these tourist dollars.
This will be more than just an increase in budget it will need to be a change in mentality and business practice in Costa Rica.
