Hotel bookings in Costa Rica
 

During high season - is it recommended to book hotels beforehand from canada or should I do it when i arrive in Costa Rica?

If I want to book from North America - how should I go about doing it? do I use a service, travel agent, or do I call the hotels directly from Canada?

Any suggestions for who to use?

I traveled in the summer of 2003 and found that almost all of the hotels had rooms available, but I personally booked ahead of time directly with each hotel. If you do a general search, you will find numerous hotels and options to choose from. Enjoy.

I'm going in March and booked this past summer. A couple of the properties didn't have the exact room I wanted, and I had to take a different room even that far in advance. I don't think that CR is the best place to take a chance on last minute bookings. Some of the towns only have a few hotels, and some don't look too nice! I booked everything with the hotels directly (via email). I used this forum and a travel book to pick out hotels that looked decent in the areas I wanted to visit.

Up until 9/11 you could safely travel to CR during some of the high season and be sure of getting a place when you got there. If you aren't fussy you can still do that but it might not be where you want to be. There were times like Easter and the spring break weeks that it would book up but Jan and parts of Feb were no problem. Costa Rica has really been discovered and some places are already booked for a lot of the high season. I would definitely prebook. You can do it yourself on line by writing directly to the hotel. Arenal.net is a good place to contact for booking in the La Fortuna/Arenal area. They can tell you at a glance if there is availabililty at many of the hotels. They could possibly help with all your bookings. They can also help with transportation if you need it. Some hotels will even help with other bookings. If you are going this year, I would get right on it.

In our past 2 trips we only booked our first and last nites in SanJose . All other days in between we were winging it ! If we liked a place , we stopped to see if they had room etc. BUT , this was all off season or Green Season .We just returned from our third trip in November and did the same thing , and this time with 2 kids in tow ! Again it was the Green Season , and I did a lot of e-mailing to different hotels just before leaving to make sure rooms were available . We love doing it this way , might not be for everyone , works for us . ( we often fly standby ) Faith

It seems to me that just in the past few months, many more are taking advantage of Costa Rica. Everything I've read and heard lately indicates that things are booking up much earlier than even last year. Definitely reserve ahead. Personally, we usually book online by e-mail, but it is probably a better idea to call.