The CheckIn

The Source · Guanacaste & the Costa Rica Coast

What I Wish I Knew on Day One

Julia's pro tips for a successful Guanacaste launch. Twelve years across three continents distilled to the dozen things that actually move the needle here.

Julia Daly

Julia says

Raw and real. The fastest way to a smooth Guanacaste launch is to skip the avoidable scars.

  1. 01.

    Get the ICT registration before you list. Not after.

    Costa Rica went from 'enforcement is mostly theater' to 'platforms are reporting your bookings to the tax authority' in about eighteen months. The Non-Traditional Rental Registry application is online, the documentation is light, the registration is free. If you list without it, you're not just out of compliance, you're increasingly being delisted by the platforms themselves. Apply on day one. Add the inscription code to every listing the day it arrives.

  2. 02.

    Hire locally. Always. Even if you don't speak Spanish yet.

    The single best operational decision I've made in Costa Rica is hiring a cleaner from the village where the property sits, not a 'professional service' run out of Liberia. The village cleaner knows your neighbors. She'll get you the maintenance pro at 7am on a Sunday because his cousin is her son's godfather. She'll spot the iguana that got into the AC closet before the guest does. The professional service won't. Hire local. Pay above market. Train forever. (You can read the longer version of this in my love letter.)

  3. 03.

    Power and water are not the same here. Backup is not optional.

    The Guanacaste grid is meaningfully more reliable than the Caribbean side, but you will still lose power for 4-8 hours per month in peak rainy season. Most operators install a backup generator (Honda EU2200i at minimum for a small property, a proper standby Generac for anything bigger). Water: the AyA municipal supply is solid in Tamarindo, Coco, Flamingo, and the town cores; it's unreliable in Nosara, Santa Teresa, and the more rural pockets. Plan for a cistern (tinaco) and a backup pump. Confirm at the property level before you close.

  4. 04.

    Saturday is the arrival day. The whole region runs on it.

    Unlike most U.S. markets where check-ins skew toward Friday or Sunday, Guanacaste runs Saturday-to-Saturday because that's how Liberia airport flights from the Northeast US schedule. Your cleaning crew is going to be at five properties on the same Saturday afternoon. Build the turn around that reality. Friday-arriving guests pay a 10–15% premium because they're filling an otherwise-empty Friday night and reducing your crew's Saturday pressure. Same for Sunday departures.

  5. 05.

    Dry season vs. green season is a 1.5×-2× rate split. Price like it.

    December to April: high season, full ADR, 50-60% occupancy on a good listing. May to November: green season, ADR drops 40-70%, occupancy hovers around 35-45%. The mistake operators make is averaging it: pricing the year at an average rate. Don't. Price the high season at what the market will bear (a great Tamarindo three-bedroom can clear $500/night in February), and price the green season aggressively for occupancy (workation guests, digital nomads, Tico-family weekend trips). Two separate pricing strategies, not one.

  6. 06.

    Semana Santa is a separate weather system.

    Holy Week (the week ending on Easter Sunday) is the single richest week of the year for vacation rentals in Costa Rica. Tico families travel domestically en masse; international travelers layer in on top. ADR runs 2x the rest of dry season. Inventory inside 6 months of Semana Santa is gone. Pre-bake the pricing in October of the prior year. Don't leave it on auto.

  7. 07.

    Hire a Costa Rican contador. From day one.

    A real Costa Rican accountant who specializes in tourism rentals will charge you $1,500-$3,500 per year and save you 3-5× that in tax optimization, IVA reconciliation, and ISR filing. Trying to DIY this from abroad with QuickBooks and Google Translate will cost you the savings in penalties within two years. The contador is also the one person who reliably tells you when a new tax rule is real versus when it's WhatsApp noise.

  8. 08.

    The 4Runner > the rental sedan. Always.

    If you're going to operate here without living here, you need a vehicle on the property or available to your team. Sedans don't make it up the unpaved access roads in Nosara, Santa Teresa, or half of Tamarindo's residential blocks. A used Toyota 4Runner or a Hilux is the standard operator vehicle here. (I traded my Dutch bicycle for a 4Runner the week I moved. Best decision I made.)

  9. 09.

    Photography in the golden hour. Not the noon hour.

    Guanacaste light is brutal at noon. White-balance gets blown out, ocean views go grey, every photo looks the same as every other listing. The Tamarindo and Nosara photographers who actually book listings shoot from 5pm to 7pm or 6am to 8am. Pay the premium for those windows. The cost difference between a noon shoot and a golden-hour shoot is $200; the booking-rate difference can be 15-25% over the first six months.

  10. 10.

    Surf days move the calendar. Know your spot's swell.

    Tamarindo is consistent year-round but small-wave most of the time. Playa Grande gets the bigger Tamarindo swell. Nosara (Playa Guiones) is the most consistent surf spot in the country with 300+ surfable days a year. Santa Teresa is the heaviest, most exposed break in this part of the country, peaking April-November. If your listing is in a surf town and your description doesn't speak to the surf, you're leaving money on the floor. Learn the swell. Use it in the listing copy.

  11. 11.

    Coastal property = beach, mold, termites. Maintenance is the job.

    Salt air eats everything. Hardware turns to powder in five years. Wooden anything needs treatment annually. Termites are not a possibility, they are an event that has already happened and will happen again. Maintenance is not a line item, it is the operating philosophy of the property. Budget 8-12% of gross revenue for maintenance, not the 3-4% U.S. operators assume. The properties that look good five years in are the ones whose operators ran the numbers right at year one.

  12. 12.

    Banking is hard. Open your CR account before you list.

    Opening a Costa Rican bank account as a foreigner takes 4-12 weeks and a stack of documents you won't anticipate (apostilled birth certificate, criminal record, residency status, source-of-funds letter). Start the day you close. Some operators get around this with Wise or a CR corporation account, but for IVA filings you need a real CRC-denominated bank account in the end. The longer you wait, the longer Hacienda takes to approve your filings.

  13. 13.

    Spanish-only guest comms is a brand, not a limitation.

    Most U.S. operators try to handle Costa Rica guest comms in English-only because they're worried about Spanish-speaking guests they can't serve. Wrong frame. Run Spanish AND English. The 35-45% of your bookings that come from Tico families, Mexican professionals, Colombian honeymooners, and Argentine surfers will pay full rate and stay quietly and review well. They're the most underserved demand in the market. Hire one bilingual ops lead. Watch the green-season occupancy lift.

Got a tip we missed?

If you've been hosting in Guanacaste for a while and there's a mistake you'd save a new operator from, send it. We'll add it.

julia@ohanavacations.com

Julia Daly

About the curator

Julia Daly

Costa Rica & International Operations · Ohana Vacations

Leads Ohana's Costa Rica team and oversees the company's international operations. More than a decade of building hospitality teams across Latin America, Europe, and South Africa. Curates The Guanacaste Source because the Pacific coast deserves an operator-level guide, not another listicle written from a laptop in another country.

julia@ohanavacations.com

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