* Costa Rica’s tourism institute (ICT), a government body, has released new figures showing that 1.338m tourists visited Costa Rica in the first half of 2023 via air (which accounts for 90% of tourist arrivals), up 19.4% on the same period in 2022 and above the 1.337m registered in the same period in 2019, the year before the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic struck. The ICT highlights that the US remains the main source of tourists, accounting for 792,944 of arrivals in the first half of 2023 while Europe accounted for 225,617. It noted that tourism generated 158,810 direct jobs in the first quarter of 2023. According to the ICT, 2.35m tourists visited Costa Rica in 2022, of which 2.12m arrived via air. According to the ICT, the 2022 figure, which represented 75% of tourist arrivals registered prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, was over a million more than in 2021 and was higher than the 2.02m figure forecast for 2022 by the authorities.
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