Eco-tourism in Costa Rica post-2020: who survived and who didn't

Eighteen months of closed borders changed the landscape

When Costa Rica shut its borders in March 2020, the country’s tourism sector — responsible for roughly 8.2% of GDP and over 200,000 direct jobs — went into freefall. The first question in early 2021, as borders cautiously reopened, was not which destinations recovered fastest. It was which operators survived.

The answer, somewhat surprisingly, tracked closely with one variable: CST certification.

The Certificación para la Sostenibilidad Turística (CST) is Costa Rica’s national sustainability rating system, administered by the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT). It scores hotels, tour operators, and transport companies across four categories — physical-biological parameters, infrastructure, external clients, and socioeconomic environment — and awards a leaf rating from one to five. A five-leaf operation is, in theory, as close to genuinely sustainable tourism as Costa Rica defines it.

What the pandemic revealed is that CST certification is a surprisingly good proxy for business resilience.

Why certified operators fared better

The correlation between CST status and survival is not accidental. It reflects structural differences in how these businesses operate.

First, CST-certified operators tend to have deeper relationships with local communities. When tourist revenue dropped to near zero, businesses embedded in their surrounding villages could pivot — working with local cooperatives, pivoting toward domestic Costa Rican travelers (who proved a critical lifeline), or simply being supported by communities that had seen economic benefit from the operator’s existence.

Second, the environmental practices that earn CST points often translate into lower operating costs. Solar panels, rainwater collection, reduced waste streams — these aren’t just good marketing, they’re genuine cost reductions that gave certified lodges more runway during 18 months of near-zero income.

Third, and most practically: CST certification is increasingly required for international tour operator partnerships. The German and Dutch eco-tour markets — significant sources of high-spend travelers — have tightened their vetting. If your operation isn’t certified, you’re invisible to TUI’s sustainability portfolio or SNP Natuurreizen clients. Certification meant maintaining those international relationships through the shutdown.

The casualties: who didn’t make it

The hardest-hit segment was mid-tier operators who had built their business on volume: day-trip vans leaving Jacó for Manuel Antonio, bulk-booking souvenir shops at Monteverde’s entrance, cheaper zipline operators in La Fortuna competing on price rather than experience quality.

Without CST certification, these operators had no cushion. Many — particularly in Guanacaste’s hotel strip near Playa del Coco and the cheaper end of Tamarindo — simply didn’t reopen. Others downsized dramatically, and in some cases this was visible on the ground: trails that had been maintained are now overgrown, small lodges that had been expanding added a half-built concrete structure to their entrance that construction never resumed.

In the Osa Peninsula around Drake Bay and Puerto Jiménez, the damage was acute. This is a region where 90% of income is tourism-dependent, alternatives are limited, and the lodges that did survive — Lapa Rios, Luna Lodge, Drake Bay Wilderness Resort — are precisely the high-commitment, CST-certified operations that had invested in certification for years. The smaller budget cabinas that catered to backpackers on a shoestring largely did not make it through.

The survivors: what they did right

Lapa Rios, with its 1,000-hectare private reserve in the Osa Peninsula, spent the shutdown period doing what most operators couldn’t: actively improving the product. They repaired trails, trained additional naturalist guides, and strengthened relationships with the Osa Conservation Area (ACOSA) for the permit system that governs access to Corcovado National Park.

Nacientes Palmichal in Acosta, a community-based tourism cooperative near San José, pivoted almost entirely to domestic tourism. With a new zip line and repackaged day-trip offers for San José residents, they turned the shutdown into a rebuilding period.

In Monteverde, the Cloud Forest Biological Reserve and the Santa Elena Reserve both held on — partly because their international donor networks (the former has NGO backing, the latter is community-owned) provided a financial floor that pure market operations lacked. By the time borders reopened, they had refreshed their trail systems and updated their wildlife interpretation materials.

Monteverde: cloud forest reserve guided hike

What “eco” actually means now versus 2019

There is a useful tension in the Costa Rican eco-tourism conversation that the pandemic sharpened considerably: what does CST certification actually certify?

The honest answer, pre-2020, was: commitment to a process, not necessarily environmental purity. A four-leaf hotel that serves imported bottled water, prints paper menus daily, and brings in foreign staff for management roles can still score highly on the physical-biological metrics if its building materials were locally sourced and it has a recycling program. The CST system has genuine strengths — particularly in pushing properties to engage with their local community economically — but it has also been gamed by properties that treat certification as a marketing exercise.

Post-2020, the distinction between authentic and performative eco-tourism has become clearer. Travelers returning in late 2020 and 2021 were, anecdotally, more discerning — burned by over-marketed “eco” experiences that turned out to be conventional tourism with a green sticker. The operators who invested in naturalist guide training, in wildlife corridor maintenance, in community benefit-sharing, are the ones travelers in 2021 were actively seeking out and willing to pay premiums for.

The greenwashing problem didn’t disappear

It would be convenient to say that the pandemic’s economic brutality cleansed the market of greenwashing operators. It didn’t, entirely.

What it did was compress the market, and into that compressed market stepped a new generation of “eco” marketing. Properties reopening after renovation quickly learned that slapping solar panels on the roof and updating their website copy with phrases like “carbon offset” and “regenerative travel” moved bookings. The ICT, to its credit, has been tightening CST renewal requirements — properties must now demonstrate continuous improvement, not just initial certification compliance — but enforcement is slow.

If you’re booking anything marketed as “eco” in Costa Rica, the practical checklist remains:

• Is the property CST-certified? (Verify at turismo-sostenible.co.cr, not just from the property’s own website.)
• Does it employ guides from the local community?
• What percentage of its food sourcing is local?
• Can it explain specifically what conservation activity it funds?

A property that can answer all four clearly is probably the real thing. One that pivots to talking about the infinity pool view when you ask about sourcing is not.

What we’d say to someone reading this in 2026

This post was written in early 2021, when the dust from the border closures was just beginning to settle. From a 2026 vantage point, the picture is clearer: the eco-tourism sector in Costa Rica did recover, but it recovered unevenly.

The high-commitment, genuinely sustainable operations came back stronger — premium rates, better-trained guides, longer booking lead times. The volume-based budget operators that survived are now competing in a market where travelers have raised the floor on what they expect from an “eco” experience.

The CST’s role as a quality signal has strengthened. International tour operators are now treating certification as a hard requirement, not a soft preference. If you’re planning a trip now and want to ensure your money goes to operations that genuinely benefit the places you’re visiting, the CST verification tool is still the best public resource available.

The operators who didn’t survive — the casualty list from 2020-2021 — represent a permanent restructuring of the market. For better or worse, Costa Rica’s eco-tourism has moved upmarket. The challenge now is ensuring that “upmarket” doesn’t mean “inaccessible,” and that the communities who built their livelihoods around sustainable tourism can still participate in it at every economic tier.

Read more about how prices have shifted in our 2023 affordability analysis and how the country’s broader climate commitments play into this story in our carbon neutrality overview.