Tourism in Costa Rica employs about 20,000 fewer people than it did two years ago, and the smallest businesses have absorbed most of the loss. Tourism-linked employment fell from 187,798 people in the second quarter of 2024 to 167,661 in the same period of 2026, a drop of 20,137 jobs, according to the Continuous Employment Survey from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). The figures run through June and were released in August.
The sector did recover slightly over the past year as employment rose by 2,836 people from the second quarter of 2025, when it had fallen to 164,825, but it remains well below the 2024 level. The steepest decline came in businesses with one to three workers, which account for the largest share of tourism employment. Those firms employed 63,471 people in the second quarter of 2026, down from 74,892 two years earlier, a loss of 11,421 jobs, or 15.2%.
Measured against 2022, when microbusiness employment reached 81,116, the decline is 21.8%. The current level is 25.5% below the series peak of 85,132, recorded in the second quarter of 2019, before the pandemic. The activities that shed the most jobs over the two years were food and beverage services, vehicle rental, travel agencies and reservation services, and sports and recreation.
Shirley Calvo, executive director of the National Chamber of Tourism (Canatur), attributed the decline to a combination of rising operating costs, the appreciation of the colón, thinner profit margins and signs of slowing demand. She said very small companies have little room to absorb a drop in revenue or a rise in costs, so any squeeze quickly turns into staffing adjustments.
Calvo said the chamber has received reports of businesses cutting staff, hiring less and holding off on new positions, though it has no consolidated figure on how many microbusinesses have closed or reduced hours. She explained that most tourism companies earn the bulk of their income in dollars while a large share of their costs are in colones, so a weaker dollar leaves them with fewer colones for the same sales.
Víctor Umaña, an economist and director of the Center for Tourism Studies (CET), said the exchange rate is the main factor pushing small operators out of business. He noted that one- to three-person businesses carry fixed costs, have limited access to financing and often depend on booking platforms and tour operators to find customers, which limits their ability to set prices.
Umaña also cautioned that 2024 may have been an unusually strong year rather than a sustainable baseline. He said employment levels in 2025 and 2026 resemble those of earlier years, that international arrivals have grown only moderately, and that digitalization may allow businesses to operate with fewer staff per sale.
Daniel Ortiz, managing partner of the economic consulting firm Cefsa, pointed to a shift in the profile of visitors toward higher-value tourism. He said a more expensive Costa Rica may be losing appeal among budget travelers such as backpackers, while visitors concentrated in luxury hotels may spend less outside those properties.
The currency pressure is unlikely to ease soon as Federico Quesada Chaves, director of the School of Administrative Sciences at the State Distance University (UNED), said the exchange rate will probably remain relatively stable through the end of the year, with a slight downward tendency, as year-end bonus payments and business transactions bring more dollars into the economy.
Quesada said businesses and consumers should watch the market closely between late October and early November, when those seasonal flows typically intensify. He said tourism operators, exporters and companies tied to foreign investment face the greatest strain because they bill in dollars but pay salaries and operating costs in colones, and he cited possible adjustments to bank reserve requirements or the monetary policy rate as measures that could relieve the pressure.
The Central Bank of Costa Rica (BCCR) has kept its monetary policy rate at 3% since July, and Quesada noted that it holds more than $20 billion in international reserves. The Central Bank’s reference selling rate stood at 454.15 colones per dollar as of today, near the record-low levels of recent weeks.
Taken together, the employment figures suggest that for the country’s smallest tourism businesses, from tour guides to rental counters to roadside eateries, the strong currency has become a lasting cost of doing business rather than a temporary squeeze.
