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This chapter analyzes the tourism industry from national and regional perspectives, in order to understand the past and current trends in Costa Rica’s positioning and branding attributes and strategies for tourism development. The intent here is not to provide an exhaustive comprehensive literature review of academic research on country branding; and so it is by all means a case study as it describes the evolution of the tourism industry in Costa Rica – including the transformative stages the country went through since the 1980s – as planned tourism national management programs evolved toward reaching the target of creating a nature-based tourism brand. The medical industry and then medical tourism industries are analyzed in a global basis and the US market is examined in detail because of its potential to develop a new complementary niche for Costa Rica’s tourism industry. The chapter intends to asses Costa Rica’s potential to become a country brand in medical tourism, leveraged on its natural tourism destination branding status quo.

This paper explores how racial neoliberalism is the latest evolution of race and global capitalism and is analyzed in the example of global tourism in Costa Rica. Racial neoliberalism represents two important features: colorblind ideology and new racial practices.

Two beach tourism localities in Costa Rica are investigated to identify the racial neoliberal practices that racialize tourism spaces and bodies and the ideological discourses deployed to justify racial hierarchical placement that perpetuates new forms of global and national inequality.

Three neoliberal racial practices in tourism globalization were found. First, “neoliberal networks” supported white transnational actors’ linkage to national and global tourism providers. Second, “neoliberal conservation” in beach land protection policies secured private tourism business development and impacted current and future racial community displacement. Third, “neoliberal activism” exposed how community fights to change local tourism development was demarcated along racial lines.

An inquiry into the mechanisms and logics of how racism contemporarily operates in the global economy exposes the importance of acknowledging that race has an impact on different actor’s global economic participation by organizing the distribution of material economic rewards unevenly.

As scholarship exposes how gender, ethnicity, and class are constituted through global economic arrangements it is imperative that research uncovers how race is a salient category also shaping current global inequality but experienced differently in diverse geographies and histories.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the relative importance of sustainable tourism practices to medical tourists. Sustainable management practices have become the accepted and appropriate model for tourism. Medical tourists, those who visit a foreign country for a medical procedure unavailable at home due to high costs, timeliness or local laws and customs, are asked how important a set of sustainable management practices are in their experiences. Selected for this study are the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC). These criteria have been designed to be the minimum practices to ensure sustainability for the business as well as protect the natural and cultural resources.

An online survey was employed to gather the travel patterns, motivations and socio‐demographics of medical tourists and to test their ranking of the GSTC on a five‐point Likert scale.

Medical tourists who travelled to Costa Rica, a recognized ecotourism destination, are more likely to support some of the sustainable criteria designed to maximize social and economic benefits to the local community and minimize negative impacts, than those who travelled elsewhere.

While the sample size is modest, this is an exploratory assessment by medical tourists of sustainable management practices.

Research into sustainable medical tourism practices is timely given that hospitals are not traditionally in the tourism business, but are now rapidly seeking to provide this service to their foreign patients.

The paper presents what is believed to be the first investigation into medical tourists' preferences in sustainable tourism practices.

The aim of the current study is to use a city case study from Costa Rica to evaluate the Nash equilibrium point and Anna Karenina Principle in relation to community-based tourism (CBT), collaborative destination marketing (CDM) and strategic destination branding (SDB) – all of which require similar facilitators and suffer from similar inhibitors.

The study combines a case study approach with in-depth interviewing of local business stakeholders as the aim is to reveal a specific event in a specific setting.

In-depth interviews with local tourism product and service suppliers provided evidence that numerous deficiencies stem from the lack of collaborative destination marketing and branding in Costa Rica. This undermines the Nash equilibrium, namely successful CBT marketing and branding.

The results support the theory that the success (i.e. Nash equilibrium) or the failure situation (i.e. Anna Karenina Principle) in CBT – similar to CDM and SDB – depend on similar critical factors, including a shared vision, all-inclusive stakeholder involvement and participation; and cooperation and collaboration.

Results indicated an urgent need for governments, donor organizations, universities and NGOs to partner to collectively develop campaigns and educational and training programs for human and social capital development.

This study integrates sustainable tourism, tourism development, poverty alleviation, community-based tourism (CBT), collaborative destination marketing, strategic destination branding (SDB), Nash equilibrium and Anna Karenina Principle to explain the successful application of community-based tourism, which has not been previously reported.

This paper aims to examine how “wilderness tourism” is being successfully used to promote tourism development in the economically depressed community of Bangor Ridge in Jamaica. Through this promotion, its sponsor, Sun Venture Tours, has been able to create employment for local residents and in so doing, contribute to community development and poverty alleviation. The company has also been able to demonstrate that local entrepreneurs have the capacity to address issues in their communities with little or no reliance on government.

The paper employs a qualitative research methodology using both primary and secondary data. The study focuses specifically on Bangor Ridge in Jamaica with Costa Rica and Belize used as comparators.

This paper concludes that the exclusion of heritage assets from the government's development strategies for tourism in Jamaica has resulted in economic and social stagnation and a decline in economic opportunities for rural communities on the island where unemployment and poverty are rife. It argues that there is a strong case for consultation among all stakeholders as to the value of the country's natural assets and the future of tourism in Jamaica. The paper observes that tourism cannot be sustained unless Jamaica's natural assets are preserved and carefully utilized.

This paper explores topical issues and provides a case study that clearly illustrates how government could redirect its interest in terms of support to local communities whose assets form the basis for tourism products on the island.

The current tourism model based on luxury hotel resorts in the Gulf of Papagayo (Guanacaste, Costa Rica) is largely affecting the living condition of its nearby communities. This paper aims to discuss the importance of promoting public–private partnerships (PPPs) as innovative forms of governance to increase the sustainability of this tourism model.

Based on the review of institutional documents and the PPP literature, this article critically maps each stage of the process to design PPPs for sustainable tourism, taking into account the case of Guanacaste. In this way, it offers a practical guideline to plan partnerships involving academia, public institutions and private partners in particular tourism sites.

The paper shows that the feasibility of a PPP in Guanacaste strongly depends on the alignment of partners’ local interests, on the adequacy of the partnership to the social and economic conditions of the context wherein it has to be carried out, and on the appropriation of results from partners.

This work combines a theoretical and practical perspective to understand the interactive process to be carried out to design PPPs in developing tourism destinations.

In recent years, Costa Rica has experienced increasing economic loss from numerous climate disasters. To meet the challenge of reducing local vulnerabilities, it is necessary to incorporate the potential impacts of current and future climate disaster events into DRM policy, planning, and practice, both at the national and local levels. This chapter evaluates the current status of policy initiative on incorporating the climate disaster risk aspect in DRM planning at the national level in Costa Rica and discusses whether this initiative provides any answers to reduce climate disaster risk. The study applies a “checklist” as a means of evaluation.

This study aims to examine nature-based tourists’ experiences in tree houses using user-generated content in Web reviews. The research objectives were to identify the main dimensions of tree house experiences and test whether these dimensions vary according to different traveller-type market segments.

A sample of 722 Web reviews was analysed using mixed content analysis methods. Leximancer software provided computer-assisted qualitative data analysis that identified the main themes, after which further qualitative analysis identified the key narratives associated with experiences.

The results reveal that tourists are extremely satisfied with their stays in tree houses. The main themes that encompass the dominant narratives are tree house, Costa Rica, staff, morning, walk, wildlife, rainforest, opportunity to learn, trip, experience and recommendation. The narratives vary according to type of traveller.

The valuable insights gained emphasise the advantages of using user-generated content in tourism studies. The results also offer a better understanding of the key dimensions of this type of nature-based tourism, including a graphic representation of the main themes and concepts in guests’ narratives. In addition, the findings emphasise that nature-based tourists are not a homogeneous group and that they can be segmented according to type of traveller.