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   - Photo via SJO -
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Published on Wednesday,
October
5, 2022
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO), located in Alajuela Province, registered more than 406,200 passengers as of August.
This figure is equivalent to a recovery of 95% compared to the same month of 2019. Three years ago, when the pandemic started, authorities registered more than 427,500 passengers.
"We have worked together with the government authorities to make economic recovery through tourism a reality and thanks to this we have already recovered the amount of traffic that was experienced before the pandemic," said Ricardo Hernández, director of AERIS, the company in charge of managing the airport.
According to AERIS, for the end of this year, the figures are optimistic and continue toward recovery. So far, the monthly average of passengers is about 396,300. This is more than a 157,800 passenger increase from those registered last year when it was a monthly average of 238,500 passengers.
The work of positioning the country as an attractive, relevant, diverse, reliable and safe tourist destination has been key for passengers to choose Costa Rica as their vacation destination, AERIS said.
According
to the authorities, these are
excellent figures considering
the winter months in the
northern hemisphere countries
have not begun yet. Those
winter months, between December
and February, are usually the
months when tourism in Costa
Rica quickly increases. Authorities
expect in 2023 to achieve the
same level of tourism recorded
before the pandemic, which was
approximately 3.1 million
visitors. Currently,
the SJO operates with 23
international airlines to 33
destinations. Another
improvement in the SJO airport
is that it was included in the
World's Airport Excellence
Program (APEX). The
program is created by Airports
Council International (ACI), a
Canadian-based organization of
over 2,000 airport authorities
aimed at unifying industry
practices for airport standards.
The tourism sector is slowly recovering after the pandemic. Records show that during the first half of the year, there have been over 1.2 million tourists in Costa Rica.
Just
last year, over 1.3 million
tourists visited Costa Rica. ---------------- How else could the government boost tourism? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to news@amcostarica.com              |
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