Yesterday I wrote about how a custom Costa Rica vacation works better than just booking a flight, hotel and rental car. Another reason that is true is because of the variety of super cool Costa Rica boutique hotels.

What is a boutique hotel? Well, my own definition would be a small hotel (less than, say, 50 rooms), which has a unique character (beyond sheer luxury and quantity of amenities). The uniqueness of many of the boutique hotels in Costa Rica partially stems from their emphasis on sustainability.

Say No to the All-Inclusive Behemoth

I have often lamented the existence of the super big all-inclusive type hotel in Costa Rica. It just seems to me Costa Rica is not a good place for those. We have a few. Most are located in the Guanacaste region. But in super bio-diverse areas of the country, such as Manuel Antonio and Arenal, they do not exist and neither should they. Instead what you generally find is the small “boutique” type, many of which present a unique experience for their guests. Unique in terms of architecture, appointment, service, food, and the degree to which these hotels both blend with the environment and provide their guests with an intimate experience of that environment. It is hard to do that when it becomes necessary to destroy the environment to construct the hotel in the first place, which is generally the case with the behemoth all-inclusives.

Below I am including a list of my ten personal favorite Costa Rica boutique hotels. I am not including a review in this post because you can read a review of each on the Hotel Pages of our site. I did include a link to the web page of each. Many of our vacation designs include these hotels and we can customize an itinerary to include one or more of them as well.

My Top 10 Costa Rica Boutique Hotels

Arenal Nayara – Arenal Volcano area
Finca Rosa Blanca – Heredia (near San Jose)
Villa Caletas – Jaco area
Grano de Oro – Paseo Colon section of San Jose
Punta Islita – Nicoya Peninsula
Lapa Rios Ecolodge – Osa Peninsula (near Puerto Jimenez)
Arenas del Mar – Manuel Antonio
Ylang Ylang – Montezuma (Nicoya Peninsula)
Florblanca – Santa Teresa (Nicoya Peninsula)
Peace Lodge – Vara Blanca

There certainly are others I did not mention, but these stand out to me as the cream of the crop. They were designed to provide a unique experience of their section of Costa Rica and each fills that bill very well. Many of them are super sustainable as well and by spending your money with them, you can be assured that your greenbacks are promoting a greener Costa Rica.

CRG

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