The Costa Rica Tourism Board was clear and successful in its plan to attract more tourists from Europe in order to stop the dependance from the United States market; however, the strategy has not just diversified the potential markets for Costa Rica but it has caused a drop of in the number of US tourists visiting the country.

A drop of 2% during the first semester of 2017 (going from 709,317 to 695,561) has the Costa Rican Hotels’ Chamber (CCH) concerned; being that the occupation has dropped close to 5% in comparison to the 2016 period.

The CCH carried out a survey among 78 hotels, and the occupation showed an average for the country of 55.3% (5% less than in 2016), there was also a considerable drop in the last two months of high season, with March reaching only 75.4% and April 66.7% . The Caribbean registered only 42% occupation while Puntarenas an alarming 51% of demand.

Expectations are not looking positive since September and October are usually low months for the tourism industry.
According to the president of the Guanacaste Tourism Chamber, Priscila Solano, in some areas of Guanacaste occupation went down as much as 30%, affecting different types of business from one to five star hotels.

Although the change of government in the United States impacts tourism to a certain degree, the different entities consider that the government has used resources in attracting European tourists and neglected the main market for the country (USA).

The Costa Rica Tourism Board showed an 8.4% growth in the number of European tourists for the first semester f 2017. This is an interesting market for Costa Rica because they tend to stay longer in the country due to the traveling distance; however it seems many of these tourists also prefer to stay in hostels, and take advantage of the Airbnb type of services.