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The US economy has been hit bad over the past months and the stock market has also dropped a few points here and there.  For people who had savings in the market or in property, trying to trade or sell these at a positive gain could be difficult.  You would think that this would directly impact Costa Rica’s economy through lower tourist numbers?However if you phone Manuel Antonio or Arenal and ask for hotel availability during February or March they will politely put the phone down and laugh.  These areas of Costa Rica have been full for months and lower end hotels that are normally available have been hit with the full occupancy bug.  This is of course great news for Costa Rica and the hotels, with the devaluation of the dollar in Costa Rica against the colon, these minor recession in the US had some hoteliers worried.  There was talk of also dropping the Colon another 20-50 Colones against the dollar last month but thank goodness this did not happen otherwise this could have caused a price hike by hoteliers.  Typically hotels pay out in local currency and collect in US dollars from clients.  For the past 10 years they have been lapping in the luxury of positive gains of the dollar against the colon.

Based on hotel availability it would appear that Costa Rica has not directly been affected by the US recession, as the saying goes, people with money always have money.  We will have to wait until the end of the year to find out the official numbers from the Costa Rica Tourism board (ICT), however current availability would show a positive increase again for 2008.

The number of Europeans coming to Costa Rica has increased slightly but the free advertising that Costa Rica is currently getting through larger hotels moving here and the doubling of Costa Rica’s small advertising budget may have caused this surge in interest and off set the recession, only time will tell.

Has the US seen the worst of the storm?  Probably not but time shall tell and Costa Rica may want to start looking towards Canada and its European friends to subsidise the US numbers.