Wellness Tourism in Costa Rica Is Evolving — Here’s What the Industry Insiders Are Seeing
Wellness tourism Costa Rica is entering a new era — and few people understand that better than Gabriel Saragovia. In Episode 296 of the Costa Rica Real Estate and Investments Podcast, host Richard Bexon sits down with Gabriel, one of the visionaries behind Rio Perdido and a founding member of the Wellness Tourism Association in Costa Rica. Gabriel has spent decades shaping eco-hospitality in Costa Rica — first at Tabacón Grand Thermal Resort and now at Rio Perdido, widely regarded as one of the country’s most unique eco-luxury hotels. In this conversation, they dig into where wellness tourism in Costa Rica is headed, what smart investors should be watching, and why protecting the country’s authenticity matters more than ever.
Costa Rica’s Tourism Market in 2026: Record Numbers and Shorter Booking Windows
Richard Bexon:
Gabriel, 2026 has been a very volatile year globally. What are you seeing on the ground in Costa Rica tourism right now?
Gabriel Saragovia:
The global volatility doesn’t always apply to Costa Rica in the same way. When we went through the pandemic, our experience was much softer than what our colleagues faced in other countries — not just in the Americas, but around the world. We pulled out of it in an exemplary way. And I think that speaks to how Costa Rica is generally very stable in tourism and other areas of production.
Richard Bexon:
How has 2026 been specifically for Rio Perdido? January, February, March were record-breaking across the board.
Gabriel Saragovia:
Exactly that. And it’s not just us. I’ve spoken to a lot of colleagues, especially in the boutique sector — four and five stars, many wellness-oriented properties. The first four or five months of this year have been record-breaking for us.
Richard Bexon:
August looks really soft at the moment from what I’m seeing.
Gabriel Saragovia:
Booking windows have shortened — and this is a fact. When you compare August, September, October to the same period last year, you might see some negative differences. But I’m telling my colleagues in revenue management to have faith. With a much shorter booking window, we’re going to see big increases when they come in. We just have to give it time.
Global volatility is also driving some travelers toward Costa Rica. I handled a booking from a cousin of mine — they live in Switzerland and were planning to go to Southeast Asia. Things got complicated, and they shifted focus to the Americas, to Costa Rica. In that case, the volatility actually helped us.
Why Master Planning Is the Most Important Decision You’ll Make Before Breaking Ground
Richard Bexon:
I’m in the master planning world at the moment. How important has landscape integration and master planning been for you at Rio Perdido and at Tabacón?
Gabriel Saragovia:
Critical. We work with pretty much one master planning firm, and I would not start a project without them. If it’s not the single most important aspect in the pre-planning stage, it’s definitely up there — as important as any architectural element, as important as the concept itself. Because they help define the concept.
I’ll give you a specific example. We had two pool features done at Tabacón during the pandemic. One was done by Vida Design Studio — Vida Landscape Design and Master Planning. The other was done by a landscaping firm, not a master planning firm.
The Vida project was commercially much more successful. It immediately and tangibly increased sales. The capacity was tripled in a way that didn’t generate crowding. It was much more integrated with the surroundings — the materials used the natural language of the setting. When you hire people who truly understand flows, nature, and emotions, that has an immediate impact on revenue. We saw it from day one.
Is Costa Rica at Risk of Becoming the Next Tulum?
Richard Bexon:
What worries you about the future of tourism in Costa Rica right now?
Gabriel Saragovia:
There’s sometimes a perceived lack of authenticity that gets associated with a destination that has already peaked — a mature destination, to put it nicely. A lot of people cite Tulum. The first time I went, it was beautiful. The people who came to develop there originally — many European, some American, many Mexican — all came with passion.
But the two times I went after that, I saw rapid degradation. Instead of taking great care to control what was being developed and how, they just opened it all up. Anyone could come in and invest.
A lot of those people came purely for business. And when financial return is your primary driving factor, you’re not going to produce the same type of project that is fueled primarily by passion. That has happened in parts of Costa Rica as well.
The government has been far too lax. We have so much bureaucracy in the permitting process, yet the barrier to entry for developing a project in Costa Rica is extremely low. Costa Rica should learn a little from countries like Bhutan and say: we are better than this. We can generate jobs and revenue with beautiful, responsible projects.
I truly believe that if you reject certain large-scale, cookie-cutter projects, you actually attract more of the type of investment that is appropriate for this country.
Richard Bexon:
I think what happens is we lose the authenticity of what made this country great. Small boutique hotels where guests interact with local culture — that’s what built Costa Rica’s reputation. The problem is the numbers don’t work today. Construction costs, exchange rates, all of it. What works financially are Ritz-Carltons and Waldorf Astorias. And unfortunately, we lose a lot of authenticity with those.
Gabriel Saragovia:
The colón is extremely powerful right now. Not long ago, we were just over 700 colones to the dollar. Right now we’re at around 450. That’s a huge change in less than four years. But there are solutions.
I was working with a fantastic Costa Rican architect named Alberto Arrea — he got his master’s degree in Barcelona, where he studied modular architecture. He was coming up with per-square-meter costs that were literally half of what other architects and construction companies were quoting, and we confirmed it. So where there’s a will, there’s a way. Even with these obstacles, we can still do beautiful, small-scale, boutique, sustainable projects.
What True Wellness Tourism in Costa Rica Actually Looks Like
Richard Bexon:
What has wellness added to Costa Rica’s story? We’ve got ayahuasca retreats now, which really pushes some limits. What has wellness brought to the narrative?
Gabriel Saragovia:
Wellness has become very comprehensive. Thirty or forty years ago, we didn’t even use that term. The few hospitality projects focused on wellness were very simple — take a walk outside, do a yoga class, eat a low-carb diet. They were pioneers. But today, wellness has gone through such an all-encompassing phase that it can actually be stressful.
There’s something called orthorexia — basically when you become so preoccupied with every little thing you consume that it becomes a disorder. We are so bombarded with instructions on how to improve our health that it becomes overwhelming. And the reason we’re so receptive to it is that for many decades, we’ve seen a gradual decline in physical health — compounded now by the degradation of mental health. We have a genuinely sick society, and I include myself in that.
Richard Bexon:
What does true wellness hospitality mean to you?
Gabriel Saragovia:
Plant medicine is huge. Psilocybin is being considered across the board by wellness centers as legality evolves in many markets. And then, maybe even bigger, we’re at the beginning of something: peptides.
Peptides are molecules that can influence biological switches inside the body. A peptide can stimulate your pituitary gland to secrete human growth hormone — so instead of injecting HGH, you can potentially take an oral pill that signals your glands to produce more growth hormone naturally. The most well-known peptide-based drugs right now are the GLP-1 medications like Mounjaro or Ozempic. There’s a lot of controversy around those. I personally think that for the majority of people using them, it’s a deal with the devil.
But the bigger point is this: we’re heading toward a blurring of the line between wellness tourism and medical tourism. I was one of the founding members of the Wellness Tourism Association in Costa Rica, and we made a huge effort to keep those two things separate. That line is going to be blurred regardless.
Going back to what I believe wellness hospitality should actually look like today — make it simple. Go back to basics. I wish my car didn’t tell me how to park or when to put on my seatbelt. We need to educate ourselves. For me, wellness isn’t about being spoon-fed everything. It’s learning how to take care of ourselves. And hotels need to reflect that.
Will Wellness-Focused Real Estate Outperform Traditional Developments?
Richard Bexon:
Do you think wellness-focused real estate and hospitality will outperform traditional developments over the next decade?
Gabriel Saragovia:
I’ve always said there’s no real distinction between the two. The genre of wellness tourism is growing, but just because something isn’t marketed as a wellness destination doesn’t mean it lacks wellness elements. Thirty years ago, when you bought a home inside a development, the common areas might have had a pool. Today, more often than not, they have an amazing gym, a sauna, probably a cold plunge pool — which you definitely wouldn’t have seen even ten years ago. All of those elements are 100% wellness-oriented. So everything we’re building, ideally, will have wellness already in its DNA.
Richard Bexon:
What people are really looking for in tourism now is to just be present — to disconnect and be still. Somebody asked me the other day why a guy with all this money would want to build a house in Costa Rica when he could go anywhere in the world. What he’s looking for with his kids is to be present and create memories. He’ll pay whatever it takes for that.
Gabriel Saragovia:
Other destinations might offer a slightly higher return on investment — maybe one or two percentage points more. But you’re willing to accept that trade-off because you want your investment to nourish not just your finances but your spirit and your family’s quality of life. And we see people making a permanent move to Costa Rica every day. Remarkably, many of them end up creating amazing businesses that far exceed double-digit returns. But initially, they were willing to take a small financial hit to live somewhere that makes them happy.
The Story Behind Rio Perdido — And the River That Made It Inevitable
Richard Bexon:
Rio Perdido feels very different from a traditional luxury resort. Was that intentional from day one?
Gabriel Saragovia:
Absolutely. We weren’t even looking to do a project. I was on my way to another part of the country and stopped to visit a friend. He kept insisting we explore the area, and check some things out. And then there was this accidental discovery — this hot river meandering down an otherworldly canyon.
We throw the word “unique” around a lot, but in this case it genuinely applies. There’s only one river like it in the world. I’ve gone looking — beautiful places in El Salvador, thermal springs in Chile, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Colorado. Nothing comes close. The closest thing is right here in Costa Rica: Tabacón. But to have a flowing hot river with that mineral content, in that canyon setting — it’s something very special.
I never saw it purely as luck. I saw it as an incredible find and a profound personal duty — a duty to protect the river, bring it to people, allow them to experience it safely and comfortably, and build a plan that would justify that protection. This was more of a reserve that found a way to be financially sustainable so that the protection of the land and the river could be prolonged.
Richard Bexon:
On paper, it doesn’t make sense. Middle of nowhere, not exactly on the main route to anything. I thought you were pushing a boulder uphill.
Gabriel Saragovia:
When you come into a project with a certain level of maturity and experience, you can rely much more heavily on your gut feeling — on what your soul tells you. And that’s what we did. We pushed the feasibility studies aside because it didn’t make sense on paper. It took a few years, but we became not only viable — we became genuinely successful.
The $500,000 Investment Opportunity Most People Are Missing in Costa Rica
Richard Bexon:
If you inherited $500,000 and had to invest it in business or real estate in Costa Rica, what would you do?
Gabriel Saragovia:
I’m obviously a hospitality person, and that’s what I know. If passion is part of the equation, I would continue to invest in hospitality. But let me give you a more specific answer.
I live in Santa Ana, essentially in the Central Valley, very close to San José. We are seeing right now the development of about a thousand residential units within a kilometer of where I am. If even 50% of those sell in the next year or two, that brings an immediate necessity for services — ground-floor retail, restaurants, everyday conveniences. These development curves always have a lag. The residential curve surges first. Services catch up later. That lag is an opportunity.
In Nosara, we saw so many hotels come up. Same thing happened in Santa Teresa. And nobody ever thought about the employees. All of a sudden, employers had to pay their staff twice as much because rent prices had exploded. But if someone had purchased land near those main beach areas and built a slightly denser but beautiful residential project where employees — even middle management and below — could live well at a fixed rent, that would have addressed a real crisis. That’s the kind of gap that’s still there in Arenal, in Nosara, in Santa Teresa.
Richard Bexon:
You could even guarantee the rents through a business-to-business arrangement — sign a three-to-five-year lease directly with the hotels. Instead of a business-to-consumer transaction, it becomes business-to-business. The income is secured.
Gabriel Saragovia:
Exactly. And in Costa Rica, I actually think the relationship between hotels and Airbnbs has been relatively synergistic — especially compared to markets like Austin, Texas, where hotels were hit hard by short-term rental volume. Here, both have been quite successful simultaneously. Most hotels are at a four or five-star level. Most Airbnbs have been developed at a two or three-star level. They’re not really competing.
Richard Bexon:
That’s exactly it. We just built a five-bedroom luxury villa in Arenal and it’s crushing it — because it has essentially no competition at that level. The Springs has a five-bedroom suite at $5,000 to $7,500 a night. Airbnbs are a fraction of that and they provide the right experience for a lot of families.
Final Thoughts on the Future of Wellness Tourism in Costa Rica
Gabriel Saragovia has spent decades helping build the wellness tourism Costa Rica is now known for around the world: projects driven by passion, protecting what makes this country extraordinary, and staying ahead of where travelers are going next. From the thermal river canyons of Rio Perdido to the broader conversation about peptides, plant medicine, and the evolution of what wellness actually means, this episode is one of the most forward-looking conversations we’ve had on this podcast.
If you’re thinking about investing in Costa Rica — whether in hospitality, real estate, or the overlooked employee housing opportunity Gabriel described — reach out to the team at InvestingCostaRica.com or email info@investingcostarica.com. Fractional investment in the new Arenal project starts at $100,000, and spots are filling up.
And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five-star review — we’re coming up on episode 300 and your support means everything.
