Season Two of new Ownership at LA ROSA ends with great success despite Global Economic Recession...

Now that the rains have arrived and the guests have for the most part left Costa Rica until the next high season, the time has come for our San Jose Airport Hotel to start all the large maintenance and improvement projects that have been delayed throughout this busy year. Hotel La Rosa de America has started this maintenance period by going on a major hiring campaign with the result of more than doubling our existing staff! We are proud to be able to do our part in the La Garita community by hiring both skilled and unskilled labour in this time of economic hardship.

Tourism throughout Costa Rica is sharply down both in numbers and in dollars spent per guest. Local newspapers have reported the decrease in tourists as high as 40% and the overall loss in tourist dollars spent as high as 60% over the last year. As predicted, this has had a major impact in all sectors of the industry but especially at the many coastal hotels.

On a positive note, competition brings out many great human qualities and in our opinion, this is occurring throughout Costa Rica with respect to tourism. The result is an ongoing, and in our humble opinion, a much needed revolution in the quality of customer service, in reliability (less Pura Vida/Mañana and more action) and in more reasonable pricing throughout the industry. Though there is significant pain being felt throughout the tourism industry at this time, we feel that once tourism rebounds in Costa Rica, the remaining quality establishments will be in a position to offer vastly better service to guests from around the World.

At Hotel La Rosa de America, we have managed to avoid much of the economic downturn. We are fortunate due to our sunny La Garita, Alajuela location. We are convenient to the one major airport - San Jose's Juan Santa Maria International Airport, and to the many world class attractions all within easy day trips, and our hotel has experienced the busiest year in it's 13 year history. We have received over 50 highly positive guest reports on the popular internet travel site Tripadvisor alone, all of which we are very proud of. We are grateful for all the continued loyalty shown by our many returning guests and for our new guests without whom, we would not be able to consider these new improvement projects.

Not wanting to take our past success for granted, we at La Rosa have taken note of all our customer comments, both the positive and the suggestions for improvement (yes there have been a couple!!) and this Fall, we will be implementing major improvements to our rooms, continuing with our upgrading of electrical throughout the hotel. We will begin switching from electric hot water to gas as much as possible as it is more efficient and better for the environment in Costa Rica. Projects currently underway include upgrading of telephone lines, increasing our high speed internet bandwidth from 1 Meg to 2 Megs, and a complete rewiring of our Cable TV so as to provide a clearer television picture within the rooms.




As always, no maintenance period would be complete without large garden projects. We will be planting a large laurel hedge down the one partially exposed side of the property with the aim of both beautifying the western end of the garden and to provide an even greater sound and privacy barrier for the hotel guests.

A number of other projects are slated for this fall and we will keep everyone up to date through this blog as the projects are completed. For now, as Hotel La Rosa de America enters it's third year of new ownership, we would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has stayed with us in the past and to encourage future potential guests to give us a try!

Lush, Lush, LUSH La Rosa!!

With the onset of the spring rains and some well placed fertilizer, the gardens of Hotel La Rosa are looking better then ever. All the work from last year, all the decisions, and concerns of cutting five big trees down has now resulted in more light getting to the ground. Now we have lots of flowers, virtually no biting insects and a vastly improved lawn as well. The remaining trees still offer plenty of shade and are looking more healthy.

The last few months have been a bit of a roller coaster for the hotel in bookings. May and June were quiet, more so than last year, and we were becoming concerned for the remainder of the year, what with the global recession and all. Then July occurred! Fourth busiest month on record for the hotel and by far the busiest low season month we have ever had. Thank you to all our guests who made this happen!

As a result, we are now well set to enter the REAL low season starting at the end of August. September and October are normally very quiet months. Even though one is virtually guaranteed rain each day in these months, it is still a great time to travel. The best weather in the country can be found on the Caribbean during this time and minimal tourists mean better prices and no lineups!


Here at La Rosa, we will be using this time to modernize parts of our hotel. Slated are major upgrades to two of our cabins, a reconstruction of our existing lawn sprinkling system, necessary in order to cover all the areas which are not covered now, and a major painting/changing of colour scheme inside the hotel. This, plus some other "non-visual" improvements in essential services will be completed in time for the beginning of the new high season in December. For those guests planning to visit our hotel in these months, no interruptions or inconvenience is anticipated as most of the work is self contained and not noisy.

All in all we consider ourselves very fortunate to have escaped the troubles of this economic recession. Many other tourist establishments have not been so fortunate, especially those still recovering from the January earthquake.

2009 High Season Coming to a Close

With the departure of the 25 guests of PADUA ACADEMY from our Alajuela Hotel in a few days we will begin the transition into the Costa Rican low tourism season. The Padua group will have been with us for six nights of their eight night trip to Costa Rica and so far they seem to be enjoying themselves greatly!

Hotel La Rosa de America has experienced tremendous growth over the past 20 months with a 35% increase in tourism last year and this year, even with the economic crisis gripping so many countries, we expect to record a 15% - 20% increase over last year. Naturally this is a good thing for the Hotel and our employees. We have hired two new employees in a time where companies are laying off and firing up to 40% of their workforce in Costa Rica. Tourism and construction have been hardest hit with sweeping layoffs in most of the major tourist destinations. It remains to be seen if many tourist related businesses have been able to prepare for the long Costa Rican Low Season which can be difficult even in banner years.

All this growth at our Alajuela Hotel has of course come at a cost. Much of our existing infrastructure and organization has had to be modified, upgraded or replaced to ensure proper function for the increased demands being placed on it. Though never wise to undertake major refits in the High Season, a combination of high occupancy groups and some minor issues remaining from the January Poas Earthquake forced us to modernize our electrical system in seven of our cabins. We were able to upgrade both above and below ground wiring, breaker boxes and associated electrical items in accordance with Canadian electrical codes which are of a significantly higher standard then the normal electrical work found in Costa Rica. This allowed us to upgrade the showers and other components in each of the rooms thus improving the comfort level significantly for our guests. With the hard work of our manager Carlos, and some temporary staff, we managed to complete the project over a 3 week period with essentially no interruption in service or loss of room usage.

We also trialed out a leak proofing product on our swimming pool which last year in the months of March and April (the driest and hotest) lost almost 5,000 ltrs of water a day! We were very skeptical of this pool sealer and I had a very hard time beliving that two litres of this goop would be sufficient to coat a pool of 125,000 litres of water! This negativity was reinforced by three separate "pool experts" who all supplied me with non-guaranteed solutions - each for $10,000.00! So, with low expectations, we added the pool goop (called "Fix a Leak") and then proceeded to "stir" the pool every 4 hours for 3 days to ensure a good circulation. Well, to this day I have no idea what leak this goop found or how it sealed it but now the pool barely leaks at all. Best of all, the pool goop solution cost only $100.00!!! Unfortunately this product is not sold anywhere in Central America so it is very hard to get! Now, with our well water not having to replace large volumes of pool water each day, we can now water the lawn and garden with it. Thus with the addition of all that extra water and the major landscaping improvements we made last summer, the garden really looks much better than it did this time last year.

Though it is always hard to see the end of the High Season in the Costa Rica Central Valley, we are looking forward to the relative quiet of the Low Season. A number of new improvements and projects are slated to keep everyone busy and I intend to get some of my own travelling and exploring in!!!

Earthquake rocks Poas Community

On January 8th 2009, a shallow Richter 6.2 earthquake rocked the local area. It was centered near Varablanca, on the slopes of Poas Volcano. Though the quake caused significant structural damage to buildings and services throughout the Poas region of Alajuela, the real damage was caused by landslides on the eastern slopes of the mountain.
Fortunately, we at Hotel La Rosa de America were relatively unaffected. Though the quake was powerful, the hotel structure was built quake resistant and we suffered only minimal superficial damage. However it was quite something to see 130,000 litres of swimming pool water still sloshing about 10 min after the quake subsided.
Unfortunately, not all were so lucky. Approximately 2,800 people were left homeless and there were many injured and some dead. The real numbers of dead and missing will not likely be accurately determined due to incomplete census data and as a result of the scope of the landslides.

Four days after the quake, we decided, as a hotel, to offer aid to the newly set up emergency Red Cross (Cruz Roja) stations near the worst affected areas. People were still being rescued when we decided to drive as far as we could to deliver our donations. The staff at the hotel put together 100 individual meals, and about 25 sets of bedding and bags of clothing. We managed to get as far as the town of Poasito, located at about 7,500 feet above sea level. A short distance past Poasito, the road showed significant damage and then it disappeared entirely over a new cliff. Even though tropical, in this area the night time temperatures are very cold for those without proper clothing.

We were quite impressed with the organization of the Cruz Roja. Costa Rica has no military and only a small police force. There are few emergency resources to draw from and virtually no heavy lift/helicopter rescue ability. This clearly compounded the rescue difficulties faced by the Cruz Roja until assistance came from Columbia and the USA. The over 3000 aftershocks (some of which registering a high as 4.8) have not made their job easier or safer either.
Fortunately, the epicenter of the quake was in a relatively unpopulated area of Costa Rica. Just 25 km to the south is located the densely populated Central Valley with over a million inhabitants. From a tourism point of view, the road north from Poasito via Varablanca towards San Carlos suffered catastrophic damage and may never be rebuilt. La Paz Waterfall Gardens is closed indefinitely as is the upper Sarapiqui River. The Sarapiqui sustained a series of huge landslides which plugged up the river causing significant environmental damage and halting river rafting, fishing and snorkeling activities on the River for probably at least a year. Fortunately, the Paquare River was unaffected and rafting operations continue there unabated.
This earthquake occurred virtually under POAS volcano. Fortunately, the volcano is still quiescent and shows no signs of becoming active soon. Poas National Park re-opened to visitors last week. Most other tourist attractions and facilities are back to normal now.
We sincerely hope that the 900 remaining families without shelter find placement within Costa Rica soon and that proper geological studies are done of the Varablanca region to determine proper slope stability in advance of any re-construction efforts. A repeat of this disaster due to lack of planning would be horrible indeed.