Nine Hotel Projects And Up to 3500 Rooms Planned.

Guanacaste’s northern Pacific coast will have an additional 3500 high-end hotel rooms within the next three years, according to at least nine major hotel and resort projects either under way, or being planned.

Hotel chains like Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, Regent International Hotels, Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, JW Marriott, Aman Resorts International, the Ritz Carlton, One and Only Resorts and the Hilton Hotels Corporation have all either broken ground, are in the permitting stage, or are negotiating build hotels from Hacienda Pinilla, south of Tamarindo, to Peninsula Papagayo.

The hotels and resorts represent a combined investment of nearly one billion dollars in a strech of Costa Rica’s coastline less than 60 kilometers (about 38 miles) long.

Most are planning up-market, five-star, hotels and resorts, which would relieve the region’s critical room shortage and create anywhere between 7000 and 13,000 jobs.

“There is an extraordinary amount of jockeying for position right at the moment,” said one hotel insider this week. “And the industry loves it because of the severe shortage of hotel rooms during the high season.”

A survey last year by the Cámara Nacional de Turismo (CANATUR) of 60 small, medium-sized and large hotels right across the country showed about 45 per cent of requests for rooms were being turned down during the high season.

In fact, the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) estimates they need about 49,000 rooms to accommodate all the tourists coming to Costa Rica.

“….which means there must be 18,192 new rooms to be distributed amongst the existing tourist base and the construction of new accommodations,” it found in its latest report.

And with most hotels in Guanacaste reporting occupancies in the past three months running between 90 and 95 per cent, the trend is being felt here.

In fact, Sildelau Salcedo, General Manager of the Paradisus Playa Conchal Resort in Brasilito, Guanacaste, estimated they rejected as much as three per cent of their business. He says they lost about $2.2 million in two years.

“We found we were rejecting a lot of business because in the high season we simply did not have the rooms to give customers,” he said this week.

Last month, and a little ahead of schedule, the hotel opened another 102 rooms, bringing capacity to 406 rooms. The rooms, an additional, 120-seat restaurant, a new pool and a conference center represented a total investment of nearly $20 million.

Desarrollos Hoteleros Guanacaste, S.A, the parent company of the Playa Conchal resort and golf course development, says they will also add a second hotel, probably beginning sometime this year. It will include 200 to 250 rooms and could be operational within 30 months.

“In fact our master plan calls for two more big hotels, and one medium-size or boutique hotel,” said Ana Saborío, Chief Executive Officer of DHG.

“We have been working on permits, designs and how we might structure a deal for some time,” she said. “We have had conversations with several hotel groups, but these kind of negotiations take time. I can’t say exactly when we will start building.”

The ICT says there are 6569 rooms in 299 hotels in northern Guanacaste and 1414 rooms in 130 hotels towards the south. It counts 4571 rooms in 294 hotels on the Central Pacific.

For its part, the Guanacaste Chamber of Tourism believes it needs, as a matter of urgency, more than 1000 additional rooms. If that is the case, then it is about to get more than it bargained for.

Grupo Roble, the El Salvador-based conglomerate, broke ground late last year and has now finished moving 50,000 cubic meters of dirt around on the five hectares of land upon which will be built a JW Marriott hotel. Foundations for the 310-room resort, inside the Hacienda Pinilla complex, will begin this month.

Originally, the developers had planned a first phase of 180 rooms, but quickly announced 250 rooms. Now they are building 310.

“They decided to build everything all at the same time,” said Mauricio Estrada, General Manager of Hacienda Pinilla this week.

“Rooms are a big problem in the area and I guess the developers see the potential for hotel rooms,” he added. “They have a very aggressive construction plan. They want to be open in 2008.”

It is not just hotel rooms. Most developments are now incorporating condominiums and villas, which the developers then manage. The Grupo Roble project is no different – it will include 200 condominiums.

Developers behind the giant Hyatt Hotel and Resort to be built in Brasilito are also looking to break ground on their $300 million project early this year.

Phase one will include all 320 hotel rooms of what will be known as the Hyatt Regency Azulera Resort and Spa, as well as the Greg Norman-designed, 18-hole, golf course.

Representatives of what is known as the Rosewood Project will be in Guanacaste later this month, for what is now believed to be a completed deal.

The deal has been on the table for more than six years, but is now understood to be signed, for 60-hectares (150 acres) of property on Playa Guachipelin, owned by Roger Hall, of Hallmark Properties, a developer out of California.

Certainly, a master plan of the area, cost analyses, and construction schedules are ready and waiting for the 80-room hotel, which will include 12 deluxe suites and one presidential suite. The project was to have been two phases, but will now go ahead as one, and include an additional 60 villas of two, three and four bedrooms. There will be a further 20 estate lots plus a spa and a fitness center.

Both Aman Resorts International and One and Only Resorts are understood to be in negotiations with Revolution LLC to site a resort on 216 hectares (about 535 acres) of land in Playa Hermosa.

Steve Case, Chairman of Exclusive Resorts, Co-Founder of America Online, Director of Case Foundation and owner and Chairman of Revolution LLC bought the land for a reported $42 million in 2005.

But one of the most ambitious projects is that by the RIU Hotel Chain, a 53-year-old Spanish chain, which has bought 240 hectares (about 600 acres) fronting Matapalo in northern Guanacaste.

RIU paid an estimated $26 million for the land, and have begun clearing.

Sources close to the deal say the group will build three hotels, with a total of up to 2000 rooms. They want to begin building this year.

Late last year, two Minnesota developers announced they are to build a $120 million, 150-room luxury hotel on Guanacaste’s Papagayo Peninsula.

Richard Pakonen and Blaine Kirchert are to team up with Regent International Hotels and the respected Costa Rican architect, Ronald Zurcher, to build and manage what will be known as the Regent Punta de Papagayo. It will include the hotel, 86 condominiums, 20 luxury estates and a giant spa. The complex will rest on some of the last remaining concession land within the Papagayo tourism project known as Polo Turí­stico.