Dinwoody

We'll be staying in the Drake Bay area of Costa Rico this spring. The resort says they need copies of our passports in order to make reservations for tours in Corcovado Nacional Park and snorkeling at Caño Island. I can understand needing passport numbers for flight reservations, but I'm uncomfortable with this. The hotel says its a new requirement. Is this a legitimate?

Thanks

Jeff_Costa_Rica

This is a new requirement as of last September. Corcovado limits the number of daily visitors -- the number is something like 300, only 70 of which are permitted to spend the night -- and tours must be arranged in advance. What was happening was that big tour operators were bulk-buying all the tickets and then reselling them, shutting out small operations. With this new system, every tour operator, large or small, has to demonstrate that it has real clients before it can purchase a ticket. You do realize, you're going to send a photocopy of the photo and info page from your passport to the hotel online, and not the passport itself. Then when you arrive at the park, that information will be matched to your actual passport.

Dinwoody

Thanks Jeff. That makes sense and I appreciate the information. Yes, I understood that they just need photocopies, not our actual passports. I can see from the thread title where it might seem like I didn't, though.