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| Courtesy Ministry of Tourism |
To have one of the most diverse ecosystems in the
world, over 25% of total land territory protected,
and a long history of peace would probably be enough
to convince the world that Costa Rica is a true
achiever among global nations. However, this small
Central American nation aims to reach higher and
higher – it recently introduced the sustainable
tourism rating system, a ten-year plan for tourism
development, and the Bill of Environmental Rights.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of not only tourists
but also tourism-related investors find their way
to this welcoming country.
Minister of Tourism, Ruben Pacheco has a task to
let the tourism sector develop, while still preserving
nature to guarantee the prosperous future not only
of the wildlife, but also of the investors and tourists.
Here, Minister Pacheco answers to the most important
issues of the Costa Rican tourism industry as it
thrives today.
Please tell me a little more
of how a hotelier became the Minister of Tourism?
Minister of Tourism, Ruben
Pacheco: I was not expecting to become minister.
For thirty-three years I have been working in the
private sector as an hotelier. President Pacheco
asked me about a year ago, before he became president,
to put together a program for the tourism development
and what Costa Rican tourism should look like in
the future. I started working on this, and one day
the president just called me up and asked me to
become a minister, and here I am.
How did becoming the minister
change the program you were working on?
Mr. Pacheco: Well
I would say it’s almost the same. We want to
develop tourism in both quality and quantity, but
not necessarily only in a massive way. We urgently
need to increase the number of available air seats
to our country from our main markets and we also
urgently need to build a large conference center
in the capital.
Please give me a few concrete
examples of sustainable tourism in Costa Rica.
Mr. Pacheco: The fact
that over 80% of all our hotels are under 50 rooms
is a prime example of sustainable tourism development.
The fact that our tourism incentive law stipulates
that a hotel that wishes to receive incentives must
not build taller than the tallest tree, that it
can not build with a greater density than 20 rooms
to a hectare, that it can not build on land that
is at more than a 30% incline, that it must properly
dispose sewage and drainage waters, etc. is also
an extraordinary example of our implementation of
sustainable tourism. And maybe our greatest contribution
in this area is the design and implementation of
the Certification for Sustainable Tourism Program
(CST) that will eventually revolutionize the way
the greater part of the world does tourism.
Costa Rica is already fairly
well known for its achievements in the area of ecotourism.
Where do you see the biggest challenges today?
Mr. Pacheco: I believe
that in every country, every large company, we should
always be thinking long-term, and we, in the public
sector, have to start doing the same. Why couldn’t
we do the same, is my question?
Therefore, the most important thing is to make
the public services sector adapt to our new strategy.
The strategy is to make a development plan for tourism
in Costa Rica for the next ten years. This means
that we, the government will be here for four years,
but the next government will have to take over the
same plan and will continue working on it.
Having a program for ten years enables everyone
to know which are our common goals and work on them.
This gives a lot of information and suggestions
to the private sector outside Costa Rica, such as
for example wholesalers, travel agencies, and airlines.
Another important challenge is that we decided
to grant tourism development a priority status.
This was the first decree that the President signed
on May 8th 2002, his first day in office.
Let’s imagine Costa
Rica in ten-years time, when this impressive program
is ending. How would you like Costa Ricans, as well
as the rest of the world, to remember you?
Mr. Pacheco: I would
say that I would like them to think that I was a
man who had the vision to introduce the long-term
development in tourism, and not as man who could
only see through to the next year.
I want people and the world to see me as a doer,
because that’s what I have been doing in the
private sector all my life and that’s what
I want to continue to do in the future. But this
also means that I am working very hard against time.
Time and bureaucracy are my biggest enemies, but
thank God all the ministers sitting with me around
the president are thinking the same way, and all
of them want to push against time, because we all
feel this urgency to act and achieve in many different
ways.
Another big challenge is
to combine preservation with development and growth.
The gold Costa Rica has is green, and if that is
ever to disappear, that will dramatically change
the tourism as an industry. How do you maintain
a healthy, but profitable balance?
Mr. Pacheco: This
is of course the essence to the longevity of the
success of our tourism sector. Nature is the main
tourism attraction that we have, so preserving it
will make all the difference in the future. This
is why we have committed to developing exclusively
on the lines of sustainable tourism, which we define
as the harmonious interaction between the proper
stewardship and regeneration of our natural resources,
the protection and promotion of our socio-economic
values and traditions and economic growth, all of
this while causing a positive impact on the quality
of life of our citizens. Within this recipe lies
the balance.
One of the regions, which
received a lot of attention in the ten-year plan,
is the Peninsula de Osa. This tiny region has about
4 percent of the world’s biodiversity, and
therefore deserves maybe more attention and care
than other regions. What are your concrete plans
in this region?
Mr. Pacheco: With
the help of experts on territorial planning of the
Japanese Government, we have developed a very detailed
master plan for this area that insures that if it
is properly implemented it will protect this area
properly for generations to come. Here you will
see the good balance between tourism development
and nature conservancy.
Costa Rica is one of the
few countries that managed to show an increase in
tourism last year, despite of 9-11, according to
the WTO. What does this tell you?
Mr. Pacheco: One must
take into consideration the fact that Costa Rica
closed last year with a four percent increase, whereas
Central America as a whole closed at three percent
down from the previous year, so we are doing much
better than the rest of the region.
Many of those Americans,
who look for adventure type of travels, are now
more likely to choose Costa Rica for their holidays,
as opposed to some other destinations, due to its
proximity to the US. Do you see this as a window
of opportunity to Costa Rica to attract more American
travelers?
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| Photo by Miia Niskanen |
Mr. Pacheco: It is
surprising how few Americans know anything about
Costa Rica and its diversity. I would say that in
Costa Rica the Americans find diversity of products,
comfort and luxury, beaches, adventure, as well
as a very interesting and safe country. Depending
on where you are in the US, you can reach Costa
Rica within a two- to five-hour flight. Yes, the
problems in other parts of the world could easily
become a blessing for our country in the increase
in tourism.
How do you think Costa Rica
is perceived abroad?
Mr. Pacheco: The perception
of the people in different countries is generally
that Costa Rica is a country of peace, a big democracy,
and the most stable democracy in Latin America.
We have survived without an army already for 53
years. This makes people, and the Americans, have
confidence in our country, and that’s why the
number of US tourists in Costa Rica is growing.
I have read a lot about your
idea to “professionalize the promotion of tourism,”
and about your recent visit to the US to promote
Costa Rica. What exactly is being done to attract
more Americans to CR?
Mr. Pacheco: We went
visiting all the major companies in the USA and
Canada. We also talked to wholesalers and airlines,
owners and CEO’s, trying to find out what their
needs, expectations, and future plans are in relation
to Costa Rica. We found very interesting results,
and based on these results we have built a new marketing
strategy.
We are actually expecting a significant increase
from the USA and Canadian market. The response has
been so incredibly positive that we postponed some
other activities we had in other areas just to properly
follow up on this plan.
Last year Costa Rica
attracted one million tourists?
Mr. Pacheco: 1,134,000
And the country is aiming
for two million in the next five years?
Mr. Pacheco: We don’t
think we can double that, but maybe we can reach
1,500,000. Most of the airlines are flying at very
high occupancy levels, around 90%, and the hotels
are having an occupancy rate of between 50% and
53%.
This high season has been the worst for us in a
long time. That’s why we decided to promote
also the possibility of more landings and connections
by sea, and I believe that we have been successful
in this area. In regards to the possibility of increasing
the number of flights, we aim at around 25 more
flights per week by the end of the year.
Ecotourism has been already
around for decades, and I believe there are some
new directions Costa Rica could take – beyond
ecotourism. Where do you see the potential of, for
example, soft adventure travel, incentive travel,
health and medical tourism, just to mention a few?
Mr. Pacheco: All of
them have potential, and this is where we see the
Costa Rican future. Of course this needs to be combined
with sustainable tourism. However, even if our main
advantage is our biological diversity, it doesn’t
mean that we have to attract only nature type people.
We also want people to know that we have the comfort
and luxury, and that we have nice hotels. During
that trip we did to the US and Canada, we found
out that people think that they are coming to the
jungle and that they need to sleep there, too. This
is the perception they have gotten from our advertising.
We used to advertise only our forests and animals,
and that has made people think that they are coming
only to the jungle, and they don’t know that
we have some very high levels of comfort, too.
My marketing advisor, Bary Roberts, is a very important
man in Costa Rica. He is the one who introduced
Costa Rica into the ecotourism world. In fact he
invented it.
We have the ecotourism, it is one of our main issues,
but around this ecotourism we have many other things
such as, for example, sports fishing, diving, biking,
golfing, white water rafting, canopy tours and lots
of other things. That’s why we are developing
Costa Rica´s nature in combination with large
hotels like the Four Seasons, which is under development.
This gives us five-star nature enjoyment.
We want the people to know that we have not only
a biologically diversified country, but that we
are a very safe country. We want them to understand
that Costa Rica is a very well educated country
with the highest level of literacy in Latin America.
Instead of having an army, we have education and
social security all over, and even the tourists
have the same rights as Costa Ricans. Our rate of
infant mortality is lower than most of the rest
of the world.
The reason, why we decided to be a little bit special
in regards to tourism, is that it is very easy to
take the direction of a country like Mexico. But
we have to keep the country and the nature for the
future. The environment to us is very important,
and this is why President Pacheco, in Johannesburg,
asked for environmental guarantees for Costa Rica.
We are the only country that chose not to allow
oil drilling in our territory. This cost us a lot,
but we have to do it for the future of Costa Rica
and our people.
Lastly, maybe you could give
our readers the list of your personal top three
destinations in Costa Rica?
Mr. Pacheco: To answer
this question you would have to specify for what,
as I prefer many different parts of my country for
different things. The truth is that visiting my
country is like wrapping twenty-five or more destinations
into one, and at the cost of only visiting one.
So make up your mind right away and come and visit
us. I will be waiting for you.
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