Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Costa Rica Tourism Forecast to be on the Rebound

This report just out shows that the sky isn't falling in Costa Rica's tourism industry.

That follows common sense... as they're not making any more paradise, except in Dubai perhaps. Costa Rica's consistently rated as one of the happiest places to live with great healthcare to boot. Its focus on the environment, short distance from US & Canada and foreigner friendly atmosphere would indicate that the trend towards more people heading south should continue.

Based on the report abstract, here's an overview of what's happening.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

eLearning in Costa Rica

I just came across this enlightened presentation of elearning in Costa Rica. Warning it's 20 minutes.

It turns out that there's an alliance with Korean and Costa Rican governments in order to share knowledge of elearning between these countries.

From my research Costa Rica is a great area for elearning. Labor is reasonable on global levels. The infrastructure is good. The literacy rate is 96% which is the highest in the region. Additionally Costa Rica has a population of only 4.5 million with strong government policies on education. Combine these facts with open source solutions and some hard work and you've got elearning.

The only negative I personally see is that Costa Rica's local telephone company is a government monopoly. Thus telecommunications is not open to the best solution that competition delivers. But rather whatever the ICE delivers.