The Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT) will invest 200 million colones in publicity to promote national tourism between next April and June, besides another promotion during August and September.

Allan Flores, tourism Minister, explained that the intention is to make the industry stronger with the visits of the locals, after a 9% drop of foreigners during the last year. Before the economical crisis it wasn’t necessary to make the national tourism a priority because the annual income of the foreigners was 12%.

“No destination is consolidated with foreigners. The strategy of the national promotion, helped a difficult year like 2009”, said Flores.

Last year, ICT launched the campaigns “Redescubra su País a un precio chiquitico” and “Aquí se cura todo”, in which there was an investment of 400 million colones.

The Institute has data that proves that 2,8 million national tourists took vacations and stayed in any kind of lodging at least 4 nights, spending an avergae of 154,000 colones.

Costa Ricans take vacations an average of twice a year. They do it with the family and during January, Holy Week, July, and December. The most visited places are Puntarenas, Montezuma, Malpaís, and all Guanacaste.

Impact. Juan Carlos Ramos, president of the National Tourism Chamber, assured that the affiliated enterprises say that the previous publicity campaigns helped the lack of foreign tourism. Due to the crisis there were 182,000 foreigners who didn’t come to travel or make some busines.