The price of tickets to fly from Nicaragua to a destination in Europe or the United States has risen so much that travelers leaving our country prefer to travel by land to Costa Rica, to board a plane to any of their destinations.
The decision of the Government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, of suspend the obligation to present a negative covid-19 testturned out to be insufficient incentive to convince US airlines to return to Nicaraguan skies, because imposes requirements on them that, in the worst case, increase their operating expenses.
“These ‘monsters’ require flexibility to operate, since they serve so many destinations on a global scale,” explains Adán Gaitán, owner of Viajes Munditur.
The result of the obstacles to US airlines is that flying to that country, or to any destination in Europe, has become excessively expensive. More than it already was.
“A ticket from Managua to Miami costs you, easily, between 500 and 800 dollars, depending on the season,” Gaitán explains. That the tickets are so expensive “decreases the country’s competitiveness as a tourist destination, in addition to the fact that there are few seats available for passengers”, whether they are businessmen, foreign tourists, or nationals returning to the country, warns the former president of the National Chamber of Tourism , (Canatur), Lucy Valenti.
“Traveling to Nicaragua has become tremendously expensive,” he added.
Strictly speaking, the sources acknowledge that this is not a new problem, but it has deepened due to the socioeconomic crisis that broke out in 2018, reinforced by the covid-19 pandemic and by the inadequate response of the regime, whose decisions made that Nicaragua is the only country in the region to which US airlines do not fly.
“Since before 2018, we were the country in the region with the least air connectivity,” recalls Valenti, referring to the fact that only some of the large companies in the United States (and very little or none of the European ones) that compete for the market world of air flights, was traveling to Managua.
Since then “it was a priority for the country to develop more aggressive strategies to attract more airlinesbecause what was available was insufficient to develop the country’s tourism activity,” said Valenti, and if that was not possible when the private sector had privileged access to the highest levels of government, it is less likely to happen now, when broke the ‘Dialogue and Consensus Model’.
“We are waiting for the gringo airlines to return. The Government knows that as long as they don’t come, tourism is not going to grow,” says Gaitán, acknowledging that there is a communication problem between the public and private sectors. “It may be that the authorities have good intentions, but they don’t consult us. We have the experience. Tourism is not a matter of competing with each other, but of offering quality, to satisfy demand”, he illustrated.
Better Liberia than Managua
The situation that arose forced the national tourism sector to offer options for passengers interested in flying from Nicaragua to the United States or Europe, to do so by traveling by land to the international airports of Liberia or Alajuela, both in Costa Rica, to board a plane paying a fraction of the cost: $300 to $350 for a roundtrip ticket from San Jose to Miami…depending on the season.
The mechanism is especially useful for the Nicaraguan tourism sector (hotels and tour operators, especially) located in the southern part of the country, which use the Liberia airport to ‘offload’ passengers and transfer them to Nicaragua.
The initiative is not new, but in the past the operation was much smaller, both because the Liberia airport was smaller; because the tourists arrived directly at the Managua airport, or because they were a few travelers who had bought a combined package that took them to Costa Rica first, and then to Nicaragua.
In that case, as now, businessmen on both sides of the border acted in a coordinated manner to serve these travelers. “What we do is charter a vehicle to take passengers to Liberia, although sometimes they only allow us to take them to the border, and a Tico carrier picks them up there, all for the same price,” he told CONFIDENTIAL a businessman in the sector who prefers not to be identified to avoid government reprisals.
Munditur prefers not to offer this service, for various technical and commercial reasons, so “those who travel to Costa Rica do so on their own. People make their own reservations, because in that country there are many airlines traveling to the United States. They pay 50 to 80 dollars to go to Costa Rica, and from there 300 dollars for a ticket to Miami or other destinations in that country”, depending on the season.
The fact that US and European airlines are not flying to Nicaragua also makes connections with Europe difficult, so the Liberia airport is a good option to get a seat, with the additional benefit that it is much cheaper than the available options. in Managua.
“Copa and Avianca can be used to make those connections, but their seat availability is much less than what they had before, which results in their tickets being more expensive,” Valenti explained.
