While in 2023 the marketing strategy of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) had the objective of attracting the same number of tourists to the country as in 2019 or more, by 2024 the goal set is to diversify the country of origin of the visitors who they arrive in the country.In this way, we would stop depending so much on North America, the region that by 2023 contributed 71 of every 100 tourists who set foot on national soil.
Market diversification
The Marketing Director of the ICT, Carolina Trejos, said that from now on there is a “clean slate” and we are returning to an objective that the institution had for years: market diversification.
“We want to balance that a little, we still have room, a lot of room to grow in Europe and develop new markets in Latin America such as Colombia, Brazil and Chile, these are markets that we will be focusing on in the coming years,” she said.
The strategy includes attracting airlines, training with agencies and wholesalers that sell tourism products, developing new products focused on new markets, among others.
Data from the ICT indicate that dependence on the North American market grew from 64.92% in 2017 to 71.09% in 2023. Europe represents the second region of origin of tourists with the greatest weight. However, in 2022 it fell from 19.40% to 17.48%.
The successful recipe for Costa Rica
Trejos commented that they already have a “recipe that has been successful for Costa Rica” in the search for new markets.Initially they work hand in hand with the specialized press of these destinations and subsequently enter a stage of in-depth education with agencies and wholesalers.Finally, you can have more direct contact with the final consumer.
During the process, they detect opportunities for alliances with companies or organizations that share values or align with the country brand. Trejos also remembers the range of options that digital marketing and tourist fairs in which they participate openly.
The spokesperson for the Tourism for Costa Rica organization, Bary Roberts, agrees on the need to find greater destinations so as not to depend to that magnitude on the United States and Canadian markets.
“There is a much greater dependence on a single market that is very sensitive, for example, to the insecurity factors that are occurring, it is a fairly high risk,” he noted.
This past Tuesday, March 5, the ICT held a conference and said that a possible scenario for 2024 is that the number of tourists entering Costa Rica by air grows again. The figure could range between 2,544,288 and 2,763,648 people, according to different mathematical models.
