Today more and more tourists keep coming to Costa Rica to discover its many treasures; and even though this could be considered good news in many ways, it could also present a big problem for the different airports in the near future.

The main issue has to do with the growing number of tourists coming to Costa Rica vs. the actual airports structures; just to give you guys an idea of what I am trying to say, consider that between January and March of this year a total number of 643.000 people came to visit the country everyone is calling the Central American jewel. (That represents a total increase of 17%) And thanks to the options described on my post: Direct Flights from Guanacaste to New York the need to renew the infrastructure of the different airports in Costa Rica will keep on being a priority for the government.

Now let’s take a look at the numbers!

An increase of 17% on the visits to Costa Rica translate into 92.000 tourists, and if we want to talk about the flights; well in 2007 the different airlines reported a 33% increase on the number of tickets sold to travel to Costa Rica. (Perhaps that did not sounded to impressive to you, so allow me to translate once again, those are 2.7 million tickets)

And just in case you wanted to know, 54% of the 1.9 million visitors that came to Costa Rican were from the US.

In December the Juan Santamaria Airport experience a major upgrade, the boarding halls doubled its numbers (17 in total.) And now there are 18 service terminals available for the travelers.

What about the Liberia airport in Guanacaste?

With a 25% of the total number of visits to the country, and even tough the Guanacaste administration has help with the development, the Liberian airport has a long way to go in terms of infrastructure. (Don’t get me wrong the service is great and the personal is awesome) never the less the growing number of visitors could eventually get out of hand.

The Costa Rican government states that they have a very solid plan for upgrading the different airport infrastructure in the country, specially the one in Guanacaste that should be ready by the first month of 2009 at the most.

So far the Airports in Costa Rica are in pretty good shape and are more than able to handle the flow of travelers that come daily to its terminals; however if something is not done in the near future, Costa Rica may become a victim of its own success among tourists.