Costa Rica News – Well even though the government is not acting quickly to make sure that the Costa Rica environement is protected and tourism remains high, on the micro-level individual businesses owners are trying to make sure their impact on the environment remains minimal as to not harm the Costa Rica flora and fauna. However, watch out for those that are being recognized by the ICT, Costa Rica’s government entity fr promoting tourism.
Over the last 3 years, Costa Rica went from 80 companies with the Certification for Sustainable Tourism (CST) to just over 270, mostly lodging establishments.
Of this group, a total of 31 achieved this recognition for the first time and received a document that certifies that its operations have a low environmental impact, through appropriate management of waste water while helping with neighboring communities .
Of these 270 firms, 204 are a group of lodging establishments, 63 tour operators, 4 rent a cars and a theme park. The CST was born 15 years ago and Costa Rica was a pioneer in its creation and implementation.
The data was released in the official celebration of World Tourism Day, which takes place in our country at the Crowne Plaza in San Jose.
As part of the activities, the Costa Rican Tourism Institute gave 25 companies hosting the Tourism Declaration. However, if you see the establishments that were granted this by the ICT they are not up to standards in many cases.
Hermes Navarro, head of Tourism Management of the company, explained that this award seeks to guarantee the legality of the activity and quality standards. There have been visitors that do not agree with this statement.
In the case of hotels and inns, the valuation is categorized with stars and, for gastronomic sites, they are recognized with forks.
It is believed in many cases that the CST is propaganda and is just a false front to promote Costa Rica as a “green” country. Who would have thought the Costa Rican government lying again to make money? They even contracted out their Costa Rica Tourism website to a company in the USA, instead of keeping that contract worth close to a million dollars in Costa Rica.
