SAN JOSE (Reuters) – Travel & Tourism to Costa Rica will probably stagnate this yr at the sharply reduced levels of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, weighing on the economy of the Central American nation, a top government official stated on Saturday.
Tourism Minister Gustavo Segura stated Costa Rica will in 2021 probably receive about one-third of the 3,139,000 worldwide travelers it had in 2019, on a par with the last yr, when some 1,011,000 abroad travelers arrived, official data shows.
In an interview, Segura stated around 75,000 travelers came to Costa Rica in December, down from 327,000 a yr earlier, underlining the challenge facing the popular travel destination and the industry as an entire in Latin America.
“Although the figures are better than those of some competitor nations, many companies can’t get going again,” Segura informed Reuters, noting that the extent of restoration would depend on how the pandemic developed and how vaccination efforts progressed.
Battered by the loss of travelers, the Costa Rican hotel and restaurant trade shrank by 40% last yr, the central bank stated.
In 2019, tourism represented 8.5% of gross domestic product and 9% of formal jobs within the nation of 5 million individuals.
Segura projected that in 2021 it can only be worth around 3.5% of GDP and that the industry will shed about half the employment it generated, or about 100,000 jobs.
The minister was hopeful that Costa Rica’s concentrate on nature tourism would reduce a few of the attendant risks with individuals being outdoors. He also pointed to the fact the nation’s health system had managed to avoid saturating its hospitals.
