The Costa Rican government today urged the population to visit the National Parks during Holy Week to support tourism and thus contribute to reactivate the national economy, impacted by COVID-19.
The call from the Ministry of Environment and Energy (Minae), the National System of Conservation Areas (Sinac) and the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) to national and foreign tourists for visiting the 29 Protected Wild Areas seeks to support the reactivation of hotels, establishments and tour operators hit by the Pandemic.
Recently, the head of the ICT, Gustavo Segura, revealed that COVID-19 affected 55 thousand workers in the sector, whose losses are around three billion dollars. For this reason, Segura invited Costa Rican families to tour Costa Rica, to rediscover the country during Holy Week.
Looking for new destinations, new experiences both on the beach, in the mountains and in rural communities to recharge their batteries and fully appreciate the natural beauties and wide national biodiversity. At the same time, he called for respecting health prevention measures, because they are still in a Pandemic.
Mitigating the economic effects of the Pandemic
The general director of Sinac, Rafael Gutiérrez, assured that national parks, due to their nature and the diversity of productive chains they create, are an opportunity to mitigate the effects of the Pandemic in the short term, by contributing at the local level to the generation of employment and socioeconomic development.
For her part, the Minae chief, Andrea Meza, said that the Protected Wild Areas produce direct and indirect jobs, allow the development of tourist activity and commercial activity in general. Finally, the President of the National Emergencies Commission, Alexander Solís, highlighted the importance, especially when visiting tourist sites such as national parks in coastal areas, of not lowering our guard, as they are facing an increase in cases of contagion by SARS- CoV-2 that cause of COVID-19, in the last week.
