NEW ONLINE LOOK FOR LA ROSA!

Main Page of Hotel La Rosa's New Home!

     This Sunday, Feb 5th, barring any technological complications, Hotel La Rosa is expecting to release an ALL NEW WEBSITE.  This site will represent months of hard work and a quantum leap forward in both online security and in guest "surfing" experience and ease of use. 
     The launch of this site is only the beginning.  Future improvements to the site will include language capability in Spanish and French and optimization for mobility users.  Encrypted online booking is included as a main feature of the new site.  Looking farther into the future, this site will link to our Reservation book directly, thus allowing for an even more streamlined booking process.   We will also be adding video clips designed to enhance the viewing of our San Jose SJO Airport Hotel.  
     We have focused on developing a site to better show the constantly improving services at our Costa Rica Airport Hotel.  We also want potential guests to experience the "La Rosa Difference", our attention to detail and our desire to provide guests with as much (or as little) travel assistance as they may need in order to enjoy their stay.   
      The new website will focus on three key points we have found most important to guests.  Comfort, Location and Value.  We also recognize that the time potential guests have is valuable and therefore, our site is designed for people who may wish to quickly surf the site and then immediately book on line.  This will now be possible.  Alternately, guests wanting detailed information about La Rosa or Costa Rica in general can browse our 25+ pages of information at their leisure and, if they wish, contact us directly before making a booking. 

Part of the Amenities Page

Room Descriptions!

       The colours used in the website reflect the actual hotel interior and exterior colours and virtually all the photos used have been taken within the last three months.  All photos including background photos (except in certain cases where a photo is taken specifically to describe a tourist attraction) are actual pictures of some part of the hotel.  It is extremely important to us that the website accurately reflects the Hotel and as a result your expected experience. 
     Hotel La Rosa has beautiful gardens, and enjoys one of the best climates in the World.  After much searching and designing, we now believe we have a website that provides large beautiful pictures capable of showing our extensive gardens and cabinas the way they should be. 
     We hope that guests who use the website will find it an enjoyable experience - one where you feel like you are "almost there on holidays already!"  In that way, once you arrive in Costa Rica, you will instantly feel at home at La Rosa as you recognize familiar things and begin to enjoy our services and attention to detail firsthand!
     Take a look at the screen shots of our yet to be released main page of the new website...  comments are most welcome!!

Focusing on our Customer Feedback!

Once again, as the summer period draws rapidly to a close, we are faced with yet another transition into the wettest of the wet season.  This is typically a time for consolidation among the various tourism businesses within Costa Rica and can sadly often lead to significant layoffs of employees.  At our Costa Rica airport hotel, we prefer to cross train our existing employees to do "other" functions in the times we have few guests.  This way, our employees can retain their jobs, and the hotel benefits by ensuring all our intensive training of staff is not wasted every year through layoffs. 

Some of La Rosa's Staff showing off our New Artwork!

During the Sept-Dec timeframe, we have traditionally focused on significant capaital improvements to enhance the hotel, and to renew it's 15 year old services and presentation.  However, this year, we are going to focus on customer feedback generated over the past year.  This feedback is invaluable to us as it allows us to maintain what works and conversely to eliminate any problems that may come up over the course of hosting thousands of guests per year.  This year we have received some guest concerns over hot water reliability.  We are currently addressing these concerns and we expect to complete the change over from gas to an electric system by the end of August.  It is disappointing to us that the carefully picked gas water on demand system failed to deliver what it promised to do.  We had hopes of eventually removing ourselves from the power grid, by first converting all major energy users to gas and then utilizing solar for the remainder.  However, this plan has proven ineffective therefore we are adapting to a new electrical energy saving on demand system.   When it is complete, guests will not be able to tell the difference between the systems they use at home and the much more powersmart on demand system being put in place.  Complete installation throughout the cabins is taking some time due to the need to rewire many areas of the hotel to 220 Volts, complete with heavier guage wiring and breakers. 

New High Output Electric System on the Left

Other upgrades will include improvements to our existing WIFI system, finishing up of the exterior painting of the entire hotel, resurfacing and repainting of the walkways, and replacement and painting of the roof over the restaurant area.  Significant upgrades to Cabin 12 and our handicapped certified cabin will also be done.  Inside, we will be upgrading all our computer systems, installing wireless music and speakers in the common areas, and introducing a brand new reservation system for better guest management.    Gone will be the hand-draulic paper based system complete with it's mountain of colour coded sticky notes!!!!  :-)    Of course continued maintenance and minor improvements will continue apace! 

As always, there is lots to be done.  We want to ensure that Hotel La Rosa is 100% ready for the 2012 High Season so as to ensure maximum guest satisfaction!   Shortly we will be making a blog comparing and contrasting some of the "then" and "now" differences at La Rosa as we will shortly be celebrating our fourth anniversary of hotel ownership in Costa Rica!

Hotel La Rosa Restructures for the 2011 High Season

We have been very grateful for the increasing business at our San Jose Airport Hotel especially during these very difficult economic times. In the last three years Hotel La Rosa de America has gone from a quiet, barely heard of Costa Rica Aiport Hotel with an average of under 30% yearly occupancy to being the number one entry and exit point for over 8,000 guests last year. We have also recently expanded, adding two new large family suites which have been very successful and we are still finding that on many days we have limited or no space left! Naturally this has resulted in a need for employee and services restructuring at the Hotel. Thus, in a process that started in June 2010 and was finally completed 01 December 2010, we have completely overhauled all aspects of our customer service and redirected efforts towards improving and enhancing the overall guest experience. One of the main components of this task was to fully restructure and retrained our employees to meet the expanding needs of our Costa Rica Airport Hotel.

One of the cornerstones of our sucess at Hotel La Rosa has been our honest, individual style guest service. It is our policy to ensure that every guest has the opportunity to interact and talk with staff about their trip plans, or trip experiences and of course to ask any travel related questions they may have. We want to ensure you have as best as possible a Costa Rican experience here in our host country! Of course, this was much easier to do when we had half the guests coming to our hotel! Thus, we have had the pleasant task of being in a position to hire more staff during a recession. Due to the current difficulties in the Costa Rican Tourism economy, and the necessity of so many hotels needing to downsize, we have been able to access a very wide selection of trained workers needing employment in a stable position. Now as a result, we have five new employees, all of whom have completed Hotel La Rosa's training program and we feel are now well equipped to assist with guests needs.

Part of our new season's goals are to provide a better overall experience for our guests. Our guest's feedback, repeat business, and guest referrals provide the single largest component of our international marketing campaign. Thus ensuring guest happiness and loyalty is extremely important for us. We know we are one of over a hundred and fifty competing Costa Rica Airport Hotels! To that end, La Rosa staff will ensure that all guests will still feel like they have entered a Hotel that still provides Bed and Breakfast personalized service. Another major change for the 2011 year is our breakfast service. We have completely changed the way we present our breakfast. It is now in an all you can eat buffet style. Our kitchen staff now prepare almost double the options we provided for in the 2010 season including eggs and on certain days, the Costa Rican favorite, "Pinto". Returning guests can still enjoy our famous Banana Bread - the secret recipe that came all the way from Raffles in Singapore many years ago! If you like tropical fruit, you will have a feast at La Rosa! We offer a minimum of five different types of seasonal fruit including what we think is the "best pineapple in the world" - the Costa Rican Pina Dorada. This local variety of pineapple is much sweeter and less acidic than normal pineapple.

Completely restructuring our breakfast would be pointless without a complete remodelling of our Italian designed dining room area. New for 2011, the dining area now displays new curtains, a much warmer sandy paint colour on the walls, a greatly expanded buffet display area, new chairs, and all new table cloths. The tables have also been re-organized to offer greater privacy for guests during breakfast time. Just outside, we are re-doing the flowerbeds to the rear of the property to increase the beauty of the breakfast area view. We are planting the beautifully scented Gardenia Flower so guests coming to breakfast can smell the scent of this "purfume on a tree'. These changes are designed to increase the early morning enjoyment for our guests - especially those who have just arrived from long flights the night before and have yet to actually see the beauty of Costa Rica.

Another objective for the hotel is to become recognized as a 3 star hotel. To this end, we continue to upgrade hotel infrastructure services, using environmentally friendly solutions wherever possible. Also, we now have 24 hour, 7 days a week night concierge service. No matter when your flight arrives, we will be waiting for you! At this time our Reception area will still close at 10 pm however, this will not be a problem for late arrivals or early departures as our night staff are now fully trained to deal with most guest needs.

Hotel La Rosa de America has spent five months of the low season restructuring in preparation for the 2011 high season. Though we recognize this process never ends (nor should it!) we do feel that our Alajuela Airport Hotel is now in an even better position to provide great service to our guests, both repeat and new alike!

Our Alajuela Airport Hotel now has Two New Familiy Suites!

Here at Hotel La Rosa de America, we have received numerous requests for cost effective accommodations suitable for larger families. Recognizing the fact that not all families consist of two adults and two children (and maybe a pet...) we have recently completed two large family suites designed for larger families. Each suite can take a maximum of six and seven guests respectively.

This way, larger families can now relax in their very own suite - all at a price significantly less than the cost of two or even three separate rooms!

Beds in each room consist of a mixture of double bed, single bed and bunk bed and can be changed as required, depending on guest needs.

Each suite also has the same services as the other rooms at the hotel with the exception (currently) of safety boxes. Each suite has a private entrance, private porch, private bathrooms, beautiful garden views, hot water, cable TV, a sitting area and Suite One has a walk in closet whereas Suite Two has access to a large private deck.

These rooms are also designed with our groups in mind. Over the past three years, our Costa Rica Airport Hotel has seen significant increases in specialized group bookings. We are now hosting a large number of groups from Canada and the USA, as well as England, France, Cayman Islands, Panama and Costa Rica.

We very much enjoy and encourage these groups to stay with us at our La Garita Airport Hotel. Most of these groups are designed around principles of learning, donation, environmental awareness, or language study. In many cases these groups give back more to Costa Rica then they take. This is in keeping with the over-arching ideals of Hotel La Rosa de America and our personal hotel business ethic.

There have been a number of other changes that have been recently implemented at La Rosa. In part, due to the increased volume of guests, we have restructured our breakfast to be more like a buffet. This has allowed us to provide even more food options to our guests. Groups especially find our breakfast buffet to be faster and simpler now now that is no longer served. No worries though! Even if our breakfast is no longer served, we always have staff available to talk to our guests and answer any questions they may have about their trip planning or whatever they wish to talk about!

Another big change at the hotel is that it is now staffed 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We have permanent English and Spanish-speaking night Concierge staff at the hotel so there are no problems with late arriving or very early departing guests. Though Reception closes still at 10 pm, we understand that most of our travellers will at some point be arriving or departing via the San Jose International Airport (Juan Santamaria Airport) and that this means they may need taxi's or other assistance during the night. Our night staff are trained to handle all normal guest needs and if a situation arises where they need more assistance, they are trained in what to do!

So, along with a variety of other ongoing changes, including the installation of a new, more environmentally friendly laundry facility and hot water production system, we at Hotel La Rosa de America are gearing up for a new, and hopefully exciting high season. We are very thankful for the loyalty and support of our past guests, many of whom have returned year after year to our hotel. You, our guests, are the reason we have been able to succeed during the last 18 months of difficult times. We are now hoping for an even better future and a great year of prosperity here in Costa Rica! Pura Vida!!

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!

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!!!

New Services in our Day Spa

After almost three months of searching and too many interviews to remember, we now have a new Massage Therapist and Esthetician.

Karol has newly graduated from a three year program of Massage Therapy and Sports Massage. She has also obtained skills in a variety of other Spa disciplines such as alternative massage, facials (complete with skin analysis and targeted treatments) body wraps, and waxing. Karol is currently completing her training for the delivery of manicures and pedicures and we hope that she will be ready to offer this service some time next March or April.

As an added benefit, she is learning English so as to better interact with the majority of our guests who may not speak Spanish.
We have high hopes for our Day Spa this dry season. We have an new and expanded list of services that we offer and we have maintained the competitive pricing that seemed so popular last year with our guests.

New options include:

- Lymphatic Massage
- Aromatherapy Massage
- Reductive Massage
- Full Facials (Treatment Facials, Facial Analysis and Facial Masks including Caviar!!)
- Body Wraps (Chocolate, Volcanic Mud or Seaweed)

To complete the SPA overhaul, we will be refurbishing the attached bathroom area and the music sound system so that guests can more enjoy their experience.

If you are interested in seeing more details about this, a complete list of Hotel La Rosa de America Spa services or our Spa prices, do visit the Spa Website at:
http://www.larosadeamerica.com/page8/page8.html
We are also offering Karol's services as part of a package deal as indicated a:
http://www.larosadeamerica.com/page4/page4.html

All who come to our hotel are welcome to use our spa, provided that, of course the owner is not in there already!!!! :-)