The Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT) reports that, of the 2.1 million people that visited Costa Rica in 2010, over 45 percent hailed from the U.S. and Canada. According to year-end figures, over 950,000 tourists from the two North American nations visited Costa Rica in 2010.
More than 830,000 U.S. tourists visited Costa Rica in 2010, a 7.2 percent increase from 2009. Canadian visitors topped 119,000, a 14.3 percent increase from the previous year.
In recent months, the ICT has extended efforts to reach out to North American tourists (see related story). Advertising campaigns have hit the streets in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston and Toronto in recent months, and appear just the beginning of an all-out Costa Rica marketing blitz in North America. The ICT reports that they hope tourism figures, which topped the 2 million mark for the second time in country history in 2010, will exceed 2.5 million by 2014.
