Record Numbers Through Liberia in March

Apr 11, 2008

By Ralph Nicholson, GUANCASTE, Costa Rica (The Beach Times)

A record 60,000 international passengers came through Guanacaste’s Daniel Oduber International Airport last month, more than any other month in the airport’s 30 year history.

The figure was 10,000 passengers more than the same period last year (which was also a record) and easily outstripped predictions by aviation officials, who had expected about 56,000 passengers for the month.

The airport numbers for March represent an 18.2 per cent increase over the same period last year.
Those statistics came on top of still more news that would indicate the tourism sector remains strong, despite the downturn in the United States’ economy.

CANATUR, the National Chamber of Tourism, said tourism in general rose by 13.78 per cent in the first quarter of the year. The Chamber said in a press release that 532,000 tourists came to Costa Rica in the first three months of the year, about 65,000 more than the previous year.

The Minister of Tourism, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, welcomed the news Wednesday.

“The almost 14 per cent growth in 2008 fills me with great satisfaction,” he said in San José. It means the (US) economic crisis has not had a pernicious effect on tourism; it is a number that any country in the world would wish for.”

Mr Benavides told reporters there had been 284,000 tourists who visited Guanacaste. “On average a tourist stays in Costa Rica ten days,” he said. “This is what we want. We believe Costa Rica has a tourism product that is associated with natural riches.”

Aviation officials are still expecting 450,000 passengers through Liberia airport for 2008. That would represent a modest ten per cent increase on the previous year.

Continental Airlines was the biggest carrier in March with 18,669 passengers — 15,600 of them were via their hub in Houston, Texas. Delta Airlines, which pioneered direct flights into Guanacaste in December of 2002 carried slightly less, 17,236. The airline reported 1860 passengers along its new twice-weekly route to and from John F. Kennedy Airport, in New York.

There are now 49 international flights a week, included scheduled air charters, into Liberia airport. Nine of those flights land between 12.55pm and 2:30pm on Saturday — stretching airport facilities to the maximum.

The Ministry of Public Works and Transport is currently assessing tenders by national and international consortiums bidding for the right to upgrade and operate the airport under a concession agreement.

Canadian, US, Spanish, Chilean and Costa Rican companies are all known to be interested in the tender.

The tender document, released in November last year, makes formal the Costa Rica Board of Civil Aviation’s new guidelines which call for the $20 million airport terminal to now be two stories high, and include four covered air bridges, or jet ways, to board and unload passengers.

Source: http://www.thebeachtimes.com/