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The Costa Rica Tourism Board in coordination with the Alliance of Organizations for the enhancement of the Community Rural Tourism has established some fundamental principles that must be guaranteed in community rural tourism development:
- Environmental tourist products that promote a sustainable use of the ecosystems. This involves an evaluation of the impacts of the tourist activity over the natural environment and the establishment of corrective actions and good practices in order to avoid the endangerment of the ecosystems integrity.
- Incorporation of environmental education aimed at the consolidation of environmental culture.
- Considering community rural tourism as a whole interacting with other economic and social activities.
- Priority to core businesses.
- Pursuit of entrepreneurial integration aimed at facilitating the creation of marketing channels.
- Promotion of the diversification and innovation of the offer in relation to the sustainable use of natural and cultural attractions.
- Priority to mechanisms that guarantee the equal distribution of the benefits generated by tourist activity at a local and regional level and the development of cultural values in the communities
- Protection and development of cultural values.
- Promotion of women active participation.
- Social integration of minorities, among them ethnic communities.
- Integration and local concentration of tourist services.
- Use of local labour force, providing social security established by law.
- Tourist product quality promotion through community training.
 Rural tourism was born from the need to generate economic alternatives able to diversify the income of the country side families, that were used to a rural development model aimed at jeopardizing natural resources. For more than 20 years, this model has been fomenting the inequity and the deterioration of the link with the rural community. As a consequence, the development of civil society monopolized the ownership of the land, generating unemployment and emigration.
The Alliance of Organizations for the Enhancement of the Community Rural Tourism appears as a way to coordinate and integrate all the community actions in order to facilitate the development of community rural tourism as a tool of local growth.
The Alliance management has started working processes between the organizations of the Alliance and the public institutions oriented to enhance community rural tourism initiatives as well as local development initiatives.
Efforts
- The opening of a negotiation process with the Costa Rica Tourism Board (ICT) to:
- Define and characterize community rural tourism as national tourist product.
- Design a project that seeks international resources for community rural tourism enhancement.
- Create a quality brand for community rural tourism.
- Carry out a strategy for the enhancement of the upper segment of community rural tourism companies.
- Create a promotion strategy for the integration of community rural tourism in the national and international market.
- Incorporate rural tourism products in the promotion of the country’s image abroad.
- The PNUD (United Nation’s Program for Development), besides being a part of the negotiation process with the State institutions, has financed a start up project to facilitate the incorporation of community rural tourism in the Costa Rica Tourism Board and create an international resources management project.
- The Development Fund of Family Assignments (FODESAF) started a process to design and finance a Program of Rural Tourism with FODESAF funds, to enable poor families to use the tourist activity as a tool for their social improvement.
- A community training and formation program in the field of tourism has been established in conjunction with the National Institute of Learning, adjusting the contents and methodology for the markets, characteristics and conditions of the community rural tourism.
- Moreover, in conjunction with the INS (Insurance National Institute), a collective liability insurance policy has been created for the communities developing tourist products. Taking into account the conditions in which each family lives, they should purchase their own policy, which happens to be very expensive and complicated. This is an essential requirement to be able to offer the product through travel agencies that operate in the country.
As for the process of formalization, negotiation channels must be established with the Ministry of Public Health, in order to facilitate the access of these families operation permits.
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Ecotourism and Nature 
