Hotel La Rosa Book Donations Update

BOOK DONATIONS UPDATE:

Reading at the Coligio del Carmen

         Through the generosity of hundreds of our guests from all over the World, our Costa Rica Airport Hotel is nearing our initial goal of 5,000 books donated to local schools.  Thank you for your support of our program.  To have this kind of success in only three years has been a humbling experience for us and has left many local school Principals amazed at the generosity of people from countries they have only seen on a map!  

Ambiente Liste El Roble Readers

         Though clearly difficult to put a monetary value on these donations, we estimate that the resale value alone in Costa Rica would be in the area of $50,000.00 USD.  Of course, the new book purchase value would be much greater.  The great cost of books for Costa Rican Schools means that only the most important books for learning can be purchased.  Novels, picture books etc are very much a secondary concern to having sufficient pens and paper, rulers etc.  Sadly this is resulting in a culture-wide loss of the love for reading. 

        With the kind assistance of an expat Canadian with close ties to the Women's Club of Costa Rica, and a local teacher, as well as the employees of Hotel La Rosa de America, we have been able to organize, sort into appropriate age groups, source deserving schools, and deliver over 3,500 books so far in English, French and Spanish as well as large numbers of school supplies.  Some of the benefit schools, statistics and pictures can be found on our website page devoted to the project: BOOK DONATIONS
         Many of the schools we have donated to now have large numbers of books in English.  To ensure that these donations are best used and distributed, we have volunteered to host the Women's Club at Hotel La Rosa and to potentially team up with this organization in order to expand the current scope of the program. 

The WOMEN'S CLUB of COSTA RICA:

         The Women's Club of Costa Rica has deep roots throughout Costa Rica, especially in the local schools and we believe that their experience with Costa Rican schools combined with books from Hotel La Rosa's Donation Program will lead to targeted donations that will provide the greatest benefit for Costa Rican children. The Mission Statement of the WCCR is "a philanthropic organization supporting education, primarily through scholarships and development of school libraries for children in Costa Rica."  
         To this end, our San Jose Airport Hotel will be hosting the next planning meeting of the Woman's Club of Costa Rica on the 26th of October 2011.  For Hotel La Rosa, this will be a charity event with all Hotel services donated for the event.  During this meeting, Hotel Staff will introduce the "La Rosa" book donation project.  We hope to continue our donation project and develop our new link with the Women's Club.

         Again, thank you all for your great support of our book donation program, and lets keep the books coming!!

Hotel Owner, Teacher and Principal

Well, our San Jose Airport Hotel gets a New Mascot

Well, it is pretty likely that most businesses that receive thousands of guests from around the world end up with some pretty interesting, even unlikely stories from time to time. For us at La Rosa de America, one of the most bizarre stories commenced about four years ago.

The Gardens of Hotel La Rosa are a sanctuary for scores of birds, animals and interesting insects all busy trying to make a home away from the noise, pavement, cars and the excessive number of dogs owned by Costa Ricans in the populous San Jose Airport region.

One day, four years ago, a baby tree squirrel tried for the first time to hop from one mango tree to the next. (Costa Rican tree squirrels are aggressive jumpers and can easily jump from tree to tree) However, this poor fellow got all knotted up, missed his landing zone and fell to the ground. In doing so he broke his back and was now a paraplegic squirrel. Normally this is where the story would end as in the wild, the survival time of this squirrel would be measured at most in hours. However, the staff at La Rosa rescued the injured squirrel, bought a cage and cared for him.

Charlie the squirrel became the unofficial mascot of our Alajuela Airport Hotel.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature never really let up on Charlie and he slowly became sick and eventually died undoubtedly from complications resulting from his paralysis.

So, La Rosa was without a mascot (we have no dogs on the property unlike most hotels as it is too hard to keep them from barking when they hear another dog bark at 2 in the morning!) Therefore, we acquired a Guinea Pig in a moment of "weakness". :-) Chancha is now about six months old, more or less fully grown and sits/squeaks proudly outside the reception door happily greeting guests. More likely, we suspect she is mostly hoping for more food! Thus the name "Chancha"... which in Spanish is a common reference to coins destined for the "Piggy" Bank.

Chancha has already nosed her way into the hearts of many children who have recently visited our hotel - and more than a few adults too! If she is out surveying her domain when you arrive, do remember to say hi to her!

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!!!