Impact and resilience measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic adopted by local actors linked to tourism in the Gulf of Nicoya, Puntarenas, Costa Rica

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of 2019, the global tourism sector has had significant impacts, mainly in the decrease in tourist flows, which has had a huge impact on tourism companies, causing everything from business bankruptcies to a disproportionate increase in unemployment. This in turn has caused a great deal of uncertainty, especially in locally-based organizations engaged in tourism activity. Costa Rica has not been the exception and has suffered a high impact on the behavior of international tourist arrivals, going from a visitation rate, according to data from the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT), of 3,139,008 per year in 2019, to 1,011,912 in 2020 and 1,347,055 in 2021.The objective of this article is to analyze the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resilience measures adopted by local actors linked to tourism activity in the Gulf of Nicoya in Puntarenas in Costa Rica during the period 2020-2021.To this end, a mixed research design will be used that contemplates the use of secondary sources: literature review, electronic documents, news, among others. In addition, inputs generated through primary sources such as questionnaires aimed at local actors linked to tourism in the region under study will be taken as support.