THE TOURISM MODEL OF COSTA RICA: ITS EVOLUTION AND ADAPTATION TO THE TERRITORY AS A TOURISM COMPETITIVENESS STRATEGY

Abstract

Tourism being an economic activity of great importance worldwide, the consolidation of spaces as tourist destinations requires a solid model, with tourist competitiveness strategies, which consider different factors of the territory, interpreting this not only as a natural physical fact, but also as a socially constructed product. In Latin America, Costa Rica is one of those destinations that has implemented different strategies to remain as a tourist reference at the regional level, the above is based on the adaptation of its tourism model to the different variables of its territory, based on its tourism system, which is called by the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT, 2017), as an adaptive system, capable of developing behaviors or ways of proceeding to move towards goals, but with unpredictable results. This article makes reference to the tourism model of Costa Rica, its different stages, its evolution and the different public policies based on the characteristics of its territory, which have allowed it to design and market its differentiated tourism products at an international level, leading to a continuous growth of tourist activity in the period 1980-2019.