Guanacaste province, already a tourist mecca, is due to get up to 3,500 new hotel rooms within the next three years, reported the weekly The Beach Times based in the Tamarindo area.

A 38-mile (60 kilomenter) stretch of coastline on Costa Rica’s northwest Pacific coast will be the site of nine major hotel and resort projects, a front page story by Ralph Nicholson reported in the Feb. 9 edition. Most of the projects are up-scale and five-star and have either already broken ground or are well along in obtaining their building permits.

The projects are backed by such major world-wide chains as Hyatt Hotels and resorts, J.W. Marriot, Hilton Hotel Corp, Regent International Hotels, Rosewood Hotels, Ritz Carlton , Arman Resorts International and One and Only Resorts, reported the weekly, adding that, when finished, the building boom would create between 7,000 and 13,000 jobs.

The story said that a survey of 60 hotels last year by the National Tourism Chamber indicates that 45% of tourist requests for rooms were turned down during the high season for lack of space, also quoting the Tourism Institute as estimating that the nation needs 49,000 more rooms to fill the peak season demand.