Costa Rica Tourist Arrivals Improve At The Airports

Fifty-two thousand more tourists to Costa Rica entered Costa RIca through the two international airports (San Jose's Juan Santamaria and Daniel Oduber) in the first quarter of 2010 compared with the same period last year.

That figure reflects a slight recovery in the number of incoming visitors, but still does not reach the level recorded in 2008.

According to data provided by the Cámara Nacional de Turismo (based on reports of the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo, ICT), 546,514 people entered in the first four months of the year.

Of that total, 446,711 tourists arrived at Juan Santamaria Airport and the remaining 99,803 arrived at Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia.

Costa Rica Tourist Arrivals Improve At The Airports

In the first quarter of 2009 we had 494,055 tourists: 414,343 at Juan Santamaria Airport and 79,712 at Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia so we had 52,459 more tourists arriving in 2010 compared to 2009

The announcement of these tourist numbers coincide with the opening of new flights and routes by three airlines in the past two months.

The first was Aeromexico, which in late March opened a Mexico City-San Jose route, a week later American Airlines which opened a direct flight between San Jose and New York and TACA, announced the opening of the San Jose - Medellin, Colombia

Our thanks to our friends at La Nación - Costa Rica's largest Spanish circulation newspaper - for their permission summarize their article.