Get in While You Can
Get in While You Can.
The Papagayo Region of Guanacaste is reaching lift off velocity and you are about to be left behind. Let’s be fair – We have been preaching to everyone who has shown a twinkle of an interest in buying property here that you need to get something before prices get out of reach and the selection becomes less attractive. Let’s also be very clear. There is still time for you to act – but we can’t keep the dogs at bay much longer for you. You need to stop procrastinating and get your little slice of heaven now. So far we have been lucky that Costa Rica has not allowed breakneck development and have held their ground by never allowing high rise beachfront developments, like Cancun, in our area. This has actually made the rest of the non beach front property even more valuable.
So here we are with the perfect scenario for you to grab something before the big boys move in and drive prices up. but don’t get comfortable because technically the big boys are already here and have started quietly and now with a slow crescendo are moving in and taking over.
Tank Tops Flip Flops Newsletter edition no. 237
Check out this article from the Robb Report at the end of this post talking about all the new high end resort developments coming in to our area. If you start to put everything together on paper you begin to realize that what we have bee telling you all these years was going to happen has happenned right before our eyes and it will just continue.Here is a short list of what is being built or already finished in our area:
- Four Seasons Peninsula Papagayo – This is where is all started and is considered the Peninsula’s Flagship Resort.
- Waldorf Astoria Punta Cacique – Ultra Luxury Hotel and Resort with high end Real Estate Options
- Ritz-Carlton Reserve Nekajui – Super Luxury Hotel and Residence options out at the Peninsula Papagayo
- Discovery Land Co. – Zapotal Golf and Beach Club – The ultimate in private luxury at a level well beyond what has been developed here in Costa Rica.
- Hyatt Andaz Peninsula Papagayo – 5 Star Luxury resort on Peninsula Papagayo
These projects are on the books or in planning stages:
- One and Only Hotel and Resort Papagayo – slated to be built on the North end of Playa Hermosa
- Six Senses Resort and Spa Papagayo – High End Spa Resort experience.
- Aman Hotel and Resort Peninsula Papagayo – Ultra Luxury Hotel Brand.
- Bahia Papagayo – Mixed use Resort and Residential being developed by the Enjoy Group that will be part of the El Magroove Marriot Autograph Collection
While we are the first to point out that some of the projects that are slated to happen do not come to fruition or the brand that eventually gets developed on the property is something different than what was originally planned. In the end the proof is is seeing the actual development happen right now. Do not sleep on this area. This is your last warning.
robbreport.com/travel/destinations/a-bevy-of-luxury-resorts-is-about-to-transform-this-quiet-costa-rica-province Here is the article reproduced with full credit to the author Melinda Fulmer:
A Bevy of Luxury Resorts Is About to Transform This Quiet Costa Rica Province
A Waldorf, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve, a Six Senses, and more than a dozen others are transforming the nation’s once sleepy Gold Coast into a scene out of St. Tropez.
Published on April 23, 2024
By MELINDA FULMER
When Chris Ingham Brooke, a digital publishing entrepreneur, first came to Nosara, Costa Rica in 2016 it was just a sleepy little surf town, with one main drag and jungle stretching to the sand.
During the pandemic, that began to change. The Costa Rican government doubled its investment in fiber optics, and a rush of remote workers from the U.S. and Canada followed. Private coworking clubs, cold plunge studios, boutiques, and restaurants serving acai bowls and blue spirulina lattes opened. When Brooke came back five years later in 2021 with his family, he was amazed at just how much the city, with its gravel roads, howler monkeys, and mom-and-pop shops had changed.
“It had become really vibrant and interesting,” he said. Still, there weren’t many options when it came to luxury family-friendly accommodations.
He bought a commercial lot and three years later, in March, opened Silvestre—a boutique resort with nine, 1,000-square-foot residences, a rooftop bar, a yoga studio, and a surf “concierge.” Located steps from the beach path to Playa Guiones, Silvestre sits on one of the most consistent surf breaks in the world.
Silvestre isn’t alone. Now, a bevy of new luxury properties are opening this year in the province of Guanacaste, the popular dry-zone province on Costa Rica’s Pacific-fronting Gold Coast. New resorts from Ritz Carlton and Waldorf-Astoria will open at the end of the year, two full decades after the area’s top resort, the Four Seasons, planted its flag on the Papagayo Peninsula. Luxury real estate sales and development is the other force reshaping Guanacaste and the area 45 minutes south known as Las Catalinas — a car-free development with a time zone that syncs up with the U.S. Villas here range from a couple million to about $10 million.
International visitors to Costa Rica jumped 17 percent last year from 2022, and the number of visitors this January was up 59 percent from January 2023 with new direct flights being added from Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, and Houston, according to the Costa Rican Tourism Board.
“The beach is seconds from my office,” says Renae Johnson, director of marketing for Las Catalinas. “I can take a 15-minute coffee break and put my toes in the sand. That is the new luxury.”
While Costa Rica’s draw is not its amenities or nightlife (although they are improving), the year-round warm weather makes it a polestar for outdoors addicts, with perfect conditions for surfing, snorkeling, hiking, and mountain biking. The jet set here are more likely to gather to watch sunsets than disco. It’s much-touted Blue Zone wellness culture and unspoiled beaches and forests are bait for chakras that are better aligned.
What’s coming to Guanacaste
The Waldorf Astoria is set to open next year.
An incredible 18 properties are slated to open by 2025, including two new luxury properties that will hit the market at the end of this year: Nekajui, a Ritz Carlton Reserve Hotel and Residences and Waldorf Astoria Costa Rica Punta Cacique. A Six Senses Resort and Spa Papagayo is expected to open in late 2025.
The Waldorf Astoria, located 30 minutes from the Liberia Airport, will have 188 guest rooms and suites and 41 residences built into the hillside with its own sandy beach, signature restaurants, cenote-themed spa, teen center, and kids club, including eco-tourism experiences in the surrounding área.
“We won’t just take care of the kids at the club, we will help them experience different things about the country,” said Valeria Nowotny, vice president of operations for Hilton’s resorts in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. “Visitors here are looking for a nature experience, mixed with a little local culture.”
Ritz Carlton’s Nekajui (which translates to “garden” in the local Chorotega dialect)— located on Papagayo Peninsula, close to the Four Seasons and Andaz resorts—will add 107 new rooms, including 30 suites and three glamping tents. Another 36 for-sale residences, inspired by Mediterranean villas, overlooking Playa Pochote have hit the market here—with one estate asking just under $15 million. Meanwhile, visitors can take a funicular down to the beach club, check out its hanging bridge and pools, hidden speakeasy, coffee and cacao bar, and indoor/outdoor spa with wellness studio and hydrotherapy area.
For luxury travelers that have struggled to find a resort in the right location with the right amenities and polish, these properties will provide new reasons to return to Guanacaste, with expanding infrastructure and more paved roads making it easier to get from place to place.
And, despite the construction boom in the Papagayo Peninsula, the área is unlikely to be overbuilt anytime soon, thanks to the vast Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), a UNESCO World Heritage site protecting wildlife on 400,000 acres from the shore of the Pacific surrounding these hotels to the lowland rainforests in the Caribbean basin. And while many locals complain that the nearby city of Tamarindo is becoming more like Cancun, there are limits to access on water rights to restrict development here and across Costa Rica.
