The first two months of 2019 showed an increase of 7.8% in international arrivals in comparison to the same two months of 2018.
A total of 499,693 international visitors arrived during January and February 2019, the highest numbers in the past six years.

In January there were a total 248,754 foreign visitors arriving through the Juan Santamaria and Daniel Oduber International Airport, an increase of 9.2% in comparison to January 2018 which saw 227,694 international arrivals. While in February, the numbers showed 250,939 foreign visitors, 6.4% more than in February 2018.

“The statistics of international arrivals through the main airports is of great importance to the country, since it is with these numbers that the promotion of the destination in foreign countries is planned”, explained the Minister of Tourism, Maria Amalia Revelo.

While in 2006 the country only had one indirect flight to Europe, currently there are 8 airlines offering flights between Europe and Costa Rica, seven of them directly and one with a stop. These airlines have confirmed their satisfaction with the results they have had in the past months of operation in the country.

The Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT) is in the process of designing a new indicator to measure the arrival of tourists to the country. For this, ICT signed a cooperation agreement with the General Directorate of Migration (DGME) that will allow them to receive every month a higher level of detail of the international migratory flow of people in Costa Rica.

The Minister of Tourism also requested the technical collaboration of the World Tourism Organization to provide assessment to the Information Unit of ICT .