Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller provides an unfiltered view of life in Latin America, contrasting it with the idealized portrayals found in travel magazines and websites. He highlights the existence of different pricing for tourists and locals, with foreign visitors often paying significantly more for entry to attractions. He also discusses the behavior of various tourist groups, such as Germans, Italians, and French, noting their different habits in terms of cleanliness, tipping, and complaints. Johnny also touches on the local sentiment towards Spanish tourists, attributing it to the historical connection between Spain and Latin America.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses the complex relationship between Latin Americans and Spanish tourists from Spain. He highlights the classist and racist nature of Spanish society, which often looks down on Latin Americans, viewing them as poor and inferior. Johnny also touches on the distinct Spanish accents from Spain versus those in Latin America, noting that Latin Americans can easily recognize the former. He emphasizes that while many Latin Americans may claim to have more Spanish blood than they actually do, the reality is often different. Johnny also shares insights on how to gauge one's Spanish proficiency, suggesting that being able to pick up accents and regional dialects is a sign of advanced language skills. He further comments on the tendency of Latin Americans to give empty compliments, especially to gringos, and notes that compliments from Latin women are often more sincere. Finally, he discusses the self-importance of Spanish tourists, despite Spain's own economic struggles, and how Latin Americans generally ignore these issues.
Johnny Mueller discusses the complex relationship between Latin Americans and Spain, highlighting the love-hate dynamic with pure-blooded Spanish people. He explains that while there is a general dislike for them, there is a desire to be Spanish. Johnny emphasizes that Spanish people have a unique advantage in Latin America due to their origins from a first-world country and their distinct appearance, which often leads to being treated like visiting dignitaries. He also mentions that few people from Spain travel to Latin America due to economic issues in Spain. The segment then shifts to discussing the dual pricing scheme for tourists and locals in Latin America, where first-world tourists often try to get locals to pay the lower entrance fees. Johnny shares his personal experience of successfully doing this without being caught. Finally, he addresses a recent report from Costa Rica revealing that half the revenue from tourist sites is being skimmed by officials, highlighting a systemic issue of class discrimination that is unlikely to be addressed due to the political and economic landscape in Latin America.
Johnny Mueller discusses the pattern of government corruption and scandals in Latin America, highlighting how these issues are common and often fade away before the next scandal emerges. He notes that the media frequently reports on these scandals, which are often seen as routine rather than exceptional. Johnny also explains how corruption is not limited to high-level officials but extends to lower-level employees, with some justifying their actions by comparing them to the larger-scale corruption at the top. He further elaborates on the role of tourism in the region's economy and how the tourism industry is often plagued by corruption, with significant amounts of money being siphoned off through various schemes. Johnny provides an example of a recent scandal in Costa Rica where millions of dollars were diverted from the tourism board, emphasizing the lack of accountability and the negative impact on the tourism industry itself.
Johnny Mueller discusses how tourism marketing in Latin American countries like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras is typically handled through opaque and corrupt processes. Instead of open bidding with first-world advertising agencies, contracts are often awarded behind closed doors to shell companies or NGOs owned by political figures. These companies rarely perform the actual work, and a significant portion of the funds is siphoned off through intermediaries. The public is largely indifferent to these practices because the tourism budgets are funded by tourist taxes, not public funds. Johnny also notes that tourists rarely choose these destinations based on advertising but rather through word-of-mouth recommendations.
Johnny Mueller discusses how Costa Rica became a major tourist destination, emphasizing the role of word of mouth and personal experiences over conventional marketing. He highlights that over 80% of people who visit Latin America do so through personal recommendations, while the remaining 20% are influenced by friends, school trips, or family memories. He then shifts focus to Costa Rica's unique position as the only Latin American country where tourism is its number one industry, attributing this to a law passed in the late 1940s that eliminated the country's military. This decision, along with the subsequent international attention, including a Nobel Peace Prize for a Costa Rican president in the 1980s, helped transform Costa Rica into a desirable tourist destination. Johnny also critiques the misconception that Costa Rica's lack of a military makes it progressive, pointing out that its police forces have grown significantly since 1948, surpassing the size of its former military in terms of government employment.
Topics
Pricing for tourists and locals in Latin America, Behavior of different tourist groups, Local sentiment towards Spanish tourists, Classism and racism in Spanish society, Spanish accents and regional dialects, Language proficiency and cultural recognition, Compliments and sincerity in Latin American culture, Economic struggles in Spain and its impact on tourism, Love-hate relationship between Latin Americans and Spain, Advantages of Spanish people in Latin America, Dual pricing scheme for tourists and locals, Systemic issues of class discrimination in Latin America
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:33 The Two-Price System in Latin America 00:02:20 Johnny's Perspective on Tourists 00:05:07 Classism and Racism in Spanish Society 00:05:22 Economic Disparities and Social Stratification 00:05:57 Differences in Spanish Accents and Dialects 00:09:16 Love-Hate Relationship with Spain and Spanish People 00:09:36 Advantages of Spanish People in Latin America 00:10:26 Gringo Advantage and Spanish Blue Bloods 00:11:05 Dual Pricing Scheme for Tourists and Locals 00:12:08 Systemic Revenue Skimming in Costa Rica 00:13:55 The Pattern of Government Corruption in Latin America 00:14:00 The Cycle of Scandals and Media Coverage 00:14:34 The Mindset of Officials and the Justification of Corruption 00:15:33 The Role of Tourism in the Economy and Corruption 00:15:50 The Negative Impact of Corruption on the Tourism Industry 00:18:24 The Standard Tourism Marketing Process in First World Countries 00:18:47 The Reality of Tourism Marketing in Latin America 00:19:27 The Role of Political Influence in Contract Awards 00:19:33 The Use of Shell Companies and Intermediaries 00:21:05 The Disappearance of Funds and Public Indifference 00:22:00 The Influence of Word-of-Mouth on Tourism Choices 00:22:56 The Power of Word of Mouth in Travel Decisions 00:23:35 Costa Rica's Unique Position in Latin American Tourism 00:24:17 The Unintended Consequences of Costa Rica's Military Elimination
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. Now here's something you probably didn't know. If you've ever been down to Latin America, you know that if you go to a tourist site, like a national park or a museum or an Incan, Mayan Aztec or Toltec ruin, if you pay attention when you buy your tickets to get into the place, you'll find that they have a gringo
[00:48] price and a local price. That always seems to be the case and the local price is always about 20% of what the foreign tourists like you or me pay. And usually foreigners don't mind paying extra because they're on vacation and when you're on vacation, you throw money around like crazy. Seems like even if you were a skin flint back home in Georgia, when you're on vacation, especially in a foreign country, sometimes you'll even tip in a restaurant and you won't even steal extra tea bags at the breakfast buffet or drop some of those little New Zealand butter squares in your pocket when nobody's looking, though I have to admit sometimes I sneak a few in my pocket myself. Anyway, like I said, when you're on vacation, unless you're a backpacker, of course, you're splurge, especially when you're in Latin America and things seem unreasonably cheap. And I know that's true since I hear it costs $400 or $500 to take a family of four to Disneyland
[01:34] these days. Now let's take the case of Costa Rica because a lot of you who listen to this show have been there and somehow you don't mind paying $15 to get into a wildlife preserve, not in a tropical paradise like Costa Rica anyway. But most foreigners don't even know that there are two prices because so few foreigners read Spanish and they can't make out the sign that says locals pay $2, foreigners $15. But believe me, most of the backpackers do know that, especially those European backpackers from Germany and Italy. And they're noted for being even bigger skin influence than backpackers from the States. And that's why on occasion, I'll actually see in a national park down here in Latin America, a German or Italian backpacker trying to corner a local to make a deal with him to buy some entrance tickets at the local price so that the foreign backpacker doesn't have to pay first world prices.
[02:20] And right now might be a good time to give you my perspective on certain kinds of tourists. First a few words about German tourists. Now if you ask any hotel people down here in Latin America, you'll find they don't mind German tourists at all, aside from the fact that they almost never tip unless forced to. Well, the maintenance staff at almost every hotel prefers German tourists, even if they don't tip, because when they check out, they generally leave the place so spic and span the rooms in better condition when they check out than when they checked in. And that's pretty much true for the Scandinavian foreign tourists too. They're clean alright, though not quite as squeaky clean as the Germans, but they do tip a little better, though not nearly as well as Americans. And by the way, for your information, Canadians are notorious cheapskates too. Now most hotel people in the high volume tourist areas down here will tell you that they don't
[03:09] much like French or Italian tourists either. And as for the Italians, they not only tip badly, but when they check out of the hotel, they leave the room looking like a hurricane hit it. And the French, though they're bad tippers too, are much cleaner than the Italians or for that matter the Greeks, but the fact is they're very demanding and they're always complaining about this, that, or the other thing. And no hotel staff person wants to get a call at 11.45 at night from a whiny complaining French person going on about how the water in the sink is not hot enough, or that there's too much noise outside on the street, as if the hotel clerk could do something about that in a tourist town where people like to party. But hotel people in the tourist areas in Latin America will also tell you that thankfully they don't get many French tourists at all, and only a small trickle of Italians. And as far as Europeans go, the vast majority of them come from Germany, Spain, England
[04:00] and the Scandinavian countries. And by the way, one hotel operator in Panama told me that if there was just one French person booked into his hotel and a call came into the front desk at 2.15 in the morning, he'd bet the farm that it would be the French guy complaining about something. And here's another oddball thing you don't learn unless you've lived down here quite a while. It seems like the local Latin Americans just don't seem to like Spanish tourists. You know, the ones that come directly from Spain. And in a backhanded way, it has a lot to do with the fact that Spain is the mother country. And nearly every Latin American, except some pure indigenous groups, have some Spanish blood in them and they brag about it every chance they get, since having Spanish blood is a big source of pride for the locals. You could say it's like Americans who can trace their lineage back to the Mayflower
[04:46] or back to an early president like Thomas Jefferson. Locals with a lot of pure Spanish blood in them have that kind of pride, though for most of them it's all talk and they can really never prove it. Just like you can't prove your great great great uncle rode with the Paul Revere. But it does make a great story at parties now, doesn't it? And by the way, every Latin claims to have more pure Spanish blood than he really has, and less indigenous blood than he really has. Because, like I've said before, this is a very classist and racist society, infinitely more so than any first world country you might want to point your finger at. There's just no comparison. I mean, just think about this statistic for a second. Guess what half of Latin America lives on less than $2 a day? The Spanish blooded people or the indigenous blooded people? I'll give you one guess. Anyway, Spanish tourists who come down here to Latin America, from Spain that is, the
[05:34] mother country, they're well known for treating Latin Americans like poor dumb sure-tailed relatives that live on the wrong side of the tracks. Kind of like the way the Brits felt about the people from the United States after the Revolutionary War all the way up through the First World War. Anyway, that's how pure blooded Spanish tourists coming from Europe view Latin America and Latin Americans in general. And here's something you might not have known. People from Spain speak with a different Spanish accent altogether than the Spanish spoken in Latin America. Even though, if you've been down here in Latin America long enough, you realize that each individual Latin country has more than one regional accent, too. Sometimes five or even ten regional Spanish accents in those very large countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. Just like the UK, which has seven or eight of its own English dialects.
[06:21] Anyway, the Spanish people from Spain have a very distinct accent in what is considered the very purest and highest form of Spanish. And it's instantly recognizable by every Spanish speaking person here in Latin America. Just like we North Americans can spot a British accent a mile away. And I mean any British accent. From the stuck-up aristocratic accent to a cockney London cabbie or even a Bollywood London cabbie. But anyway, you get the point. You and I can pick out an English accent a mile away. And Latin Americans can pick out a pure Spanish accent right away, too. And here's the thing. A lot of people have asked me, how does a gringo know, or a First World person, when his own Spanish is in pretty good shape? Well, I always tell him, you know that your Spanish is pretty good and that it's progressed beyond the fourth grade level when you start picking up Spanish accents when people are
[07:07] talking to you. And you know your Spanish is well past basic when you can pick the country that a person who's talking to you came from. And here's another clue that your Spanish is getting pretty good. And that's when you're talking to a First World person for a while, in general conversation, in English, of course. And once in a while, you blurt out a Spanish word or two without even planning it. And the act of doing that actually makes your brain pause for a split second and you think to yourself, why did I do that? Well, when that happens, you know your Spanish is really getting there. Because to tell you the truth, you cannot trust Latin Americans when they say, hey, your Spanish is pretty good. Because to tell you the truth, Latins are just full of compliments. And a lot of them are empty, too, especially when they're talking to gringos. Because that gringo advantage that you have is in full swing and Latins want to make a
[07:54] good impression. And what better way to make an impression is to tell you that your Spanish is great, even if it really sucks. And by the way, if you get a compliment from a Latin girl or woman, most often it is a sincere compliment because they're much more reserved than Latin men and generally don't make with the compliments unless they really mean it. But anyway, pure Spanish tourists down here carry themselves with an air of pomposity, or so I've been told, and they even exaggerate their pure Spanish Old World accents just to rub it into their Latin kids and cousins that they're in the presence of somebody important. And I have to agree that almost all the Old World Spanish visitors that I've come across down here seem to have this exaggerated self-importance, even though their own country's falling apart. I mean, they've got about 25% unemployment, they're teetering on the edge of bankruptcy,
[08:41] and are lining up behind Greece, Italy, Ireland, and Portugal to get thrown out of the European Union. But the funny thing is, Latin Americans don't care about that stuff either way. They don't care about what happens in the European Union, they've got enough troubles of their own. And the truth is, when they come face to face with a Spanish person direct from the old country and that Spanish person acts condescending to him, they take it and turn the other cheek. Because in every Latin American's mind, it's been drummed into him since birth that the more Spanish blood that you have in you, that pure Spanish blood from Spain, the more class you have and the more culturally superior you are. So Latin Americans have a love-hate relationship with Spain and pure-blooded Spanish people. They really don't like them that much, but they'd like to be one. So the fact is, a Spanish person direct from Spain actually has his or her own special
[09:29] kind of advantage going for him, even more so than us Gringos who have our special kind of advantage, which I've mentioned so many times. Because for one thing, people from Spain are from a first world country. And the Europeans, Canadians, and Australians are included in the Gringo Advantage, but pure Spanish-blooded people have that and the fact that they've got that very high-end Spanish accent going for him. So when they land down here in Latin America, they're treated like visiting dignitaries. Even if back in Madrid or Barcelona, they were nothing but a baggage handler at the airport. Because it doesn't matter. They're still from a first world country and they don't have a trace of that indigenous blood that makes its obvious presence known as a little bit darker skin or morena down here in Latin America. I mean, just picture for a second Julio Iglesias and Antonio Banderas.
[10:16] You know, that typical Latin lover look. That very dark hair and very pure white skin combination. That's the pure European Spanish look, not the Latin American Spanish look. So anyway, about that Gringo Advantage I was talking about, well the fact is the only people that seem to have it one up on us, the Gringos, are people directly from Spain. The mother country, the ones with that pure Spanish blood. But not to worry, very few people from Spain ever make it down here to Latin America because it's not a big country. And secondly, they have a huge economic crisis going on. So in the last five or ten years, very few have had the discretionary income to travel so far. Which means all you expats and expat wannabes out there, the Gringo Advantage is alive and well down here in Latin America. And you don't have to worry about those Spanish blue bloods hoarding in on your Gringo Advantage.
[11:02] It's just not going to happen. Anyway, now where was I? Oh yeah. I was talking about the dual pricing scheme for first worlders and locals in tourist areas, museums and historical areas down here in Latin America. And how astute foreign tourists, like Germans, try to get the locals to pay the local entrance fee for a ticket so they can get into a national park or a museum at the local rate, which is much less than what the foreign tourist rate is. Now you might be wondering, if you could get a local to pay for your ticket like that, isn't somebody going to catch you at the gate if you're obviously a first world tourist? Well, won't that raise a few red flags when you have your ticket punched? And even worse, in a lot of cases, an entrance ticket for a local is a completely different color than the ones they use for the foreign tourists who might be paying ten times as much. Well, you know what, speaking from personal experience, I've done that trick a dozen
[11:49] times myself. I have some German blood in me, too. And no guard or ticket taker has ever given me less than a smile and a wave right on through. But as you might have figured, not too many first worlders are likely to pull this scam. Outside of backpacking Germans, of course, and people like me and Expedetti. But now for the more serious part of this conversation. In a recent news article that came out of Costa Rica, it's been estimated that fully half of the revenue collected by the tourist board at the gate of historic sites and national parks and such is skimmed right where the money is collected and divvied up among certain park officials and directors. And it turns out that's been happening all over the country, practically since tourism began. And here's how they do it. The vast majority of people that go to these tourist sites and national parks are first
[12:37] world visitors. So they pay the high fee, the $15 and not the $2 that the locals pay. But at the end of the accounting period, the official value of the entrance fees that are tallied are not registered at let's say 80% foreigners and 20% locals, the real figures. But the numbers are reversed and it's reported that 80% of the people that entered the park were locals and 20% were foreigners. A very clever way to steal half the entrance fees. Now the report says this kind of thing has been going on forever and Costa Rica being the most developed country for tourism in all Latin America has the most developed system for stealing from the tourist bureau too. Now note that what I'm not saying is that the tourists are getting ripped off, though you might think they are considering they pay 10 times as much as the locals do.
[13:25] And you might even say it's class discrimination, in fact it is class discrimination. But it'd never hold up in court, not in a Latin court for sure. So anyway, how this was revealed in Costa Rica, though everybody kind of knew it was happening, they didn't really know the mechanism till now. Now this recent article that came out describing how the scam works, I'm sure won't cause any major disruptions in the way things are being done down here in Costa Rica, or in any other Latin American country, for that matter. They'll just fire some of the key players who are rich already, so it doesn't really matter and they never get the money back. And shuffle some of the other guys around and they'll end up in other government positions, they always do. That's the way things happen down here in Latin America, and every time there is a big expose in the paper and somebody gets busted in government or some group of people get busted, it's all over the papers for a week or two then it fades away.
[14:11] Until the next big scandal comes along to take its place, and usually it's not one scandal at a time. You can nearly always count on a handful of scandals going on at the same time, and that's why the first five pages of any Latin American newspaper are just littered with government corruption stories. I mean there's so much of it and it's so blatant and mind-numbing that the average guy on the street stopped paying attention to these kind of scandals decades ago. But here's the interesting part for me, and a lot of expats who know about the story. When they interviewed some of these park officials that got caught red-handed skimming that money, some of them were actually indignant about getting caught, thinking that skimming on that kind of a scale was just the way things were done. And in fact, some of them even gave the excuse that they did the skimming at their end because they knew that the big boys, the departmental heads in the country's tourism division,
[14:57] were skimming a hundred or even a thousand times more than they were. And they posed the question, what's worse? If the low-level managers and attendants and guards in the national parks skim a bit when they make a salary of only three or four hundred bucks a month, isn't that much less a crime when the higher-ups in the tourist department are skimming at a massive level? Guys that are already wealthy by Latin standards making a thousand to two thousand bucks a month. And then a news article goes on to explain how the big boys skim. Now this is interesting, get this, and what you have to remember down here in Latin America is that with Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica, a huge part of their national income is tourism dollars. So there's a huge cabinet-level bureaucracy supporting that industry, and those tourism departments have so much money flowing in and out of them that they're just bloated
[15:43] beyond belief. There's practically no accountability, and in fact in the end they probably hurt the tourism industry more than they help it. And I'll explain a little bit more about that later. And let me give you a little example of a scheme that was uncovered in Costa Rica just recently where tens of millions of dollars were diverted from Costa Rica's tourist board into the hands of, well, nobody really knows, and that's the point. And here's how this scam works. Every Latin American country has a national tourist board, and each year they have tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal to market their country as a tourism destination. Now, I'm sure all you first-worlders up there know what I'm talking about. Anybody who watches TV notices that once in a while there's a TV commercial or two depicting the glories of Jamaica, or the Bahamas, or the Virgin Islands, or Dominican Republic,
[16:31] or Puerto Rico, or Costa Rica, and usually it stars a perfect girl and a perfect guy with a perfect six-pack, playing on a perfect white sand beach, basking in a perfect sun, and bathing in perfect turquoise water. And at the end, there'll always be an announcement that says, brought to you by the Mexican or the Puerto Rican or the Costa Rican tourist board. And of course you see those tourism ads for various Latin American and Caribbean countries in the back of all those glossy magazines as well. And when you're on an international plane flight in between movies, they'll always show you some extended promotional tourist bit showing you the unspoiled glories of Panama or Nicaragua or Colombia or wherever down in Latin America. And then there's those billboards up in the first world and those giant outdoor plasma TVs. And then there's the internet. And of course there's all those Yahoo and Google ads.
[17:18] So what I'm trying to say is all these Latin American countries have huge marketing budgets. Tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Every last one of them marketing itself as the latest greatest tourist destination in the third world. Well, here's how they skim half of those millions in one easy step. Now, suppose Costa Rica's tourism department has a $50 million marketing and advertising budget this year. And actually most of these Latin American countries don't have a budget every year. They have it every election period, which is usually four or five years. And after any given presidential term is up, all the various departments have spent all their money and in fact have written a lot of bad checks too. Well, when the new administration comes in and all the old department managers are let go and the new president's boys come in on those patronage jobs, the cycle starts all
[18:03] over again. Anyway, here's what happens in a country's tourism division. Let's say for example again that Costa Rica has $50 million to spend on ads, publicity and promotion in foreign markets. Because let's face it, that's where all their tourists come from. Now, a small little Latin American country like Costa Rica does not have any high powered ad agencies that could handle that kind of an account. So they draw up a contract with one of the big first world ad agencies who can design and create the ads and promote their tourism product in all the first world international mediums. Radio, TV, magazines, internet, billboards and all that. Now that sounds pretty straight forward right? You sign a deal with a hot shot first world marketing agency or you contact a bunch of them and put your product out for bids. Well that's how you'd make the deal alright. But we're talking about a Latin American country now, Costa Rica.
[18:51] In fact the same thing goes for Guatemala or Honduras or Colombia or Peru. Anyway it doesn't get done that way. Due to the way their bureaucracy is and that it's not the least bit transparent, those kind of deals are always done behind closed doors and the most the public or the press ever gets to see of it is a canned press release with no solid details because there's no laws saying they have to give the details to the press or the public. Normally one or more members of a Latin Congress, the ones that did the budget and pushed the allocation through, the guys that know all the details and the numbers, naturally they're the guys that stand to gain the most when the contracts and the kickbacks get handed out. Now up to just a few years ago, these contracts were no bid, in other words they just handed it out to somebody. Nearly always a sweetheart deal with an intermediary company or NGO, non-governmental organization
[19:39] owned by a friend, partner or family member of someone in Congress or the president or the vice president or someone in his cabinet. And this intermediary company called an ONG wouldn't actually do any of the work at all, although it would have a fancy title that sounds like it's in the business of the work that's related to the contract. Like for example, Montaña International Marketing Consultants Limited, and they might only have a shell of an office with an address and a secretary. Yet that and a lot of inside pull will get them a multi-million dollar marketing contract or part of the tourism marketing contract. Because sometimes it's split up between a number of real and shell companies. But you can bet that all the people involved at the top are taking their cut before a single dollar gets spent on actual marketing. So now let's say this shell company called Montaña has a 50 million dollar marketing
[20:27] contract. Well, you have to do some marketing right? I mean people have to see some commercials and some television spots so it looks like something is actually being done with the money. Well in just one of the more common recent scandals, the money was tracked to a Panama Holding Company and only 30 million of the 50 was actually spent with a first world ad agency that actually did the marketing work. And since most of the time these deals are so convoluted and nearly impossible to unravel, well as you might imagine, it's like catching a drug smuggler at the border in the United States. For every one that gets caught, dozens of them slip right through. So in this particular case, 30 million dollars got spent on actual tourism marketing and where the other 20 million went, well nobody knows and guess what, nobody cares. And least of which, the public. Because for one thing, all the money is spent on tourism marketing and for that matter on
[21:15] the government tourism bureaucracy itself, well that money doesn't come from the tax coffers in Costa Rica and the same goes with the other Latin American countries. Their tourism bureaucracies are supported by a tourist tax. They level anywhere from 5 to 20 percent on hotels, restaurants, hospitality services and the like. And sometimes you see it right on your check when you go to a restaurant or stay at a hotel. Which by the way tends to irritate first world tourists because no one likes to be taxed extra for the pleasure of coming into a foreign country and spending your money there. Anyway, when this story first came out, they asked average Costa Ricans on the street what they thought about it and they all stood there and shrugged completely indifferent to it. And some of them even remarked, well you know it's not our money, it's the tourists money they're taking, not ours. So it's none of our concern really. But here's the other side of that story.
[22:02] Over the years, I've done my own little surveys down here, asking some of the tourists as I travel through Latin American countries, the simple question, how did you end up down here? What led you to come down here? To this particular country, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, Bolivia, wherever, what was it that made you choose this place to take your vacation? And here's the real surprising thing that I found out. Over the years I must have asked a thousand people that question and guess what? None of these people, and I mean none of them, ever told me that they got the idea to come and visit Bolivia or Ecuador or you name the country in Latin America because they saw a nice pretty ad in the back of Conde Nes Traveler, a commercial about the Dominican Republic on TV. Or get this, even a big report on Cozumel on the Travel Channel. And the kind of answers I did get were not so surprising.
[22:48] Most of the people came down because someone they knew came down before them and had some great pictures and stories to tell and they decided to go too. It turns out that it's simple word of mouth in more than 80% of the people that I've talked to. And the other 20% of people who came down to Latin America on vacation came because they had an exchange student friend from a Latin American country in high school or a friend from El Salvador in college or they went on a field trip from Spanish class down here in Latin America once. And now they're back here doing it again as adults when they have the money to do it right or they came down on a trip with their parents when they were kids and they had some great memories of it so they're back again. Anyway it turns out that it's all about personal experiences and word of mouth and has almost nothing to do with the way a country markets itself as a superior tourist destination.
[23:35] And here's a little fact regarding Costa Rica. It's number one industry is tourism and out of all 20 Latin American countries it's the only one that can actually say that. In every other Latin American country even the ones with a very big tourism segment like Mexico Panama and Chile the actual percentage of outside tourism dollars that those countries receive don't even come close let's say to the outside income that Mexico makes from their oil and gas and marijuana exports or Chile and their huge mining industry exports. So how did that little country of Costa Rica get on the map then how did tourism become its number one industry and why does everyone in the first world know at least someone who's been there. Well it had absolutely nothing to do with conventional marketing but it had everything to do with a law passed by the president in the late 1940s when little Costa Rica eliminated
[24:23] for all time its military. Now that little move eliminating the military which they did at the time without thinking of any of the positive unintended consequences like a tremendous boom in first world tourism the complete elimination of the defense budget and the complete elimination of scary soldiers with AK-47s standing on every corner like you'd normally see in all the other Latin American countries back in the 40s 50s 60s 70s and even 80s. Now back when that happened when they eliminated the military it caused a huge international press blitz a country with no military now that's big news and it's in Latin America no less and then in the 1980s a Costa Rican president won the Nobel Peace Prize which made him only the second Latin American to ever get one which also was huge international
[25:10] news so here you have a little country back in the 80s with two or three million people with no standing army at all and a president who's a Nobel Peace Prize winner which doesn't mean diddly today because even Obama's got one right anyway with all that international recognition and mostly because they didn't have a standing army first world people with a little extra spending money the ones who like to travel a lot who are sick of Disneyland Vegas six flags Hollywood Knott's Berry Farm and Carnival Cruises to Nassau well to them Costa Rica looked like a pretty damn good tropical destination and as opposed to almost every other Latin American country it hadn't had a civil or guerrilla war for 50 years or more so that's why Costa Rica became the destination that it is so much for pumping 50 million dollars into a first world marketing machine talk about money in the toilet but
[25:56] that's why they call it the third world right and you know it's funny how no other country ever did take a lesson from Costa Rica no one else ever eliminated their army with a stroke of a pen and maybe that's because in the first world especially militaries are too damn entrenched and any politician that would suggest such an idea would probably be assassinated a few minutes after he announced it anyway I just wanted to give you a little background on the unintended consequences of Costa Rica eliminating their army which is basically at the root of why they developed into such a tourist destination but you should also know the flip side of that coin although Costa Rica started out in 1948 without a military at all and just a tiny skeleton of a police force well because bureaucracies no matter how small are still nothing but little parasitic cancers whose only mission is to engulf the
[26:42] post well guess what since 1948 Costa Rica has created a number of police forces a civil police a national police a tourist police a transit police and I forget the other one anyway if you add up all the personnel in all those separate police forces they actually have more people on the government payroll as a percentage of population whose job is supposedly to serve and protect then the percentage of people employed in the militaries of many of their neighboring countries it's a lie and a misconception at best when you hear someone say how forward and progressive Costa Rica is since they eliminated their military because their standing police force is today much larger than the eliminated military that they always brag about but eliminating that military in 1948 still takes the gold medal for unintended tourism PR that no amount of Madison Avenue marketing could ever match
[27:38] you've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America the expat files at gmail.com once again the expat files at gmail.com see you next time