Native trees planted to turn cleared cattle pasture back into rainforest around Nayara Tented Camp.
A deed-holding community under construction in La Fortuna, most residents single mothers.
MICHELIN Keys across three countries, alongside Green Globe, Sello S, and Four Leaves certifications.
What Regenerative Tourism Means
In short: Sustainability asks a hotel to do no harm. Regeneration asks it to leave the place better than it found it. Across four countries, Nayara operates on the regenerative model: 40,000+ trees planted in Costa Rica, a coral reef rebuilt in Panama, solar arrays relieving a diesel grid on Easter Island, and a 40-home deed-holding community rising in La Fortuna.
Regenerative tourism treats a hotel as part of the place rather than a visitor to it. Operations are designed so that communities, economies, and natural environments strengthen one another. Costa Rica, where more than 98 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources and two-thirds of visitors cite ecotourism as a reason for coming, is leading the shift. CANAECO partners with organizations like Virtuoso and Beyond Green to set global benchmarks for luxury hospitality with verifiable impact.
At Nayara, the whole architecture comes down to an exchange. The place humbles you and heals you. In return, we regenerate its land and invest in its people. What follows is that exchange at work in four countries, with the receipts.
Four decades from the first eco-lodges to luxury that gives back more than it takes.
Costa Rica: The Rainforest We Replanted
The land under Nayara Tented Camp was cleared cattle pasture. Hooves, mud, fence posts. Not a bird worth stopping for.
The restoration took a decade and was never guesswork. Local biologists and indigenous knowledge guided the planting of more than 40,000 native trees, some 50,000 plants in all, chosen species by species for the animals they would feed and shelter. Cecropias went in for the sloths, and the sloths came. Toucans nest in the restored canopy. Biologist-designed frog habitats rebuilt the smallest layer of the food web, and wildlife corridors now reconnect the property to Arenal Volcano National Park so that jaguars and ocelots move through land where cattle once stood.
The country made the same bet at national scale. In the 1980s, forest covered 21 percent of Costa Rica; today it covers more than half, and a quarter of the country's surface is protected as national parks, the highest share on Earth. A resort replanting its own valley is not an outlier here. It is citizenship.
Daily operations hold the same line. The kitchens follow Cero Kilómetros, a culinary philosophy in which ingredients travel meters from on-site organic gardens and local farms, not miles. Construction uses FSC-certified materials and modular methods. Every ton of greenhouse gas the resorts emit is measured and offset, keeping the properties fully carbon neutral. Single-use plastics are gone across the portfolio.
Atacama: Nothing Is Disposable in the Driest Desert
Less than 15 millimeters of rain falls on the Atacama in a year. Water is not a utility here. It is the whole question. Nayara Alto Atacama treats every drop as a loan: modern treatment plants purify all collected water and send it back out to irrigate the grounds, including an Andean Garden of highland trees, cacti, and native plants where a lake holds aquatic life and bees and birds arrive looking for shade and food. In the driest desert on Earth, the lodge is a place things come to live.
What the desert lacks in rain it returns in sun. In 2024, the lodge completed a solar panel and battery project that was a first of its kind for Chile, built to disappear: non-reflective, coplanar panels integrated into the architecture so that the desert's visual integrity remains unbroken. The system stores enough energy to carry the property through the night, and every kilowatt-hour it produces is a liter of diesel that never has to be trucked across the altiplano. Read: Sunlit ↗
The human partnerships run older than the panels. The lodge works with the Lickan-Antay, the indigenous people of this basin, on education and heritage preservation. Most of the team comes from neighboring towns, and yearly scholarships help young people from the area finish high school. The desert teaches you that nothing is disposable. That includes talent.
The place humbles you, and it heals you. In return, we regenerate its land, and we invest in its people. That exchange is the whole architecture.
Easter Island: Stewardship at a UNESCO World Heritage Site
Walk the rim of the Rano Kau crater to the Orongo ceremonial center and you will see the original architecture of this island: low houses with green grass roofs and curved stone walls, built to hold their ground against Pacific wind. Nayara Hangaroa was designed as a tribute to them. Its own green roofs and curved walls use the land's topography for natural cooling and heating, and the work of national artisans fills the hotel, from the ceilings down to tubs carved from volcanic stone.
In May 2025, the hotel completed a 45-kilowatt solar installation that offsets the annual consumption of roughly 28 family homes. On Rapa Nui, where the grid runs on shipped diesel, every kilowatt the sun provides is fuel that never has to cross 3,700 kilometers of ocean. Read: Regeneration on Rapa Nui ↗
The deeper commitment is structural: the Hitorangi family, whose lineage on this land runs back generations, part-owns the hotel. The team comes from Hanga Roa and across the island, leading as guides and communicators of Rapa Nui history. The hotel supports cultural education and language revitalization so that the people who steward this UNESCO World Heritage Site can keep living on it, not just working at it.
Bocas del Toro: Off-Grid on a Protected Archipelago
Before a single stilt went into the water at Nayara Bocas del Toro, five independent environmental studies went first. Their verdict shaped everything: no dredging, no land clearing, every structure raised on stilts above intact mangrove roots. The island runs with no grid connection at all. Power is 100 percent solar with no diesel backup, fresh water is harvested rain stored in catchment basins holding up to 100,000 gallons and purified by ultraviolet treatment, and wastewater is treated on-site with zero discharge into the sea. Read: How We Built It ↗
Protecting the water was the floor, not the ceiling. Since 2022, in partnership with the Caribbean Coral Restoration Center, artificial reef habitats seeded with heat-resilient coral have been growing in the bay, the first of them directly below the overwater villas, visible through the glass floor panels. Fish colonized the structures within the first year. Then the nurse sharks returned, and predators only come back when the food web beneath them is working.
On land, the same logic applies to the local economy: the resort works exclusively with local tour and experience providers, indigenous Ngäbe workers build and install the reef structures, and a micro-grant program backs small-scale entrepreneurship across the archipelago. The reef was the reason the island was worth building on. The community is the reason it keeps working.
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Every structure on stilts, above intact mangrove roots. Five environmental studies came first.
The Certifications That Hold Us Accountable
Any resort can say it is sustainable. The difference between a claim and a certification is an auditor, and everything on this page answers to one. The Costa Rica and Panama properties are Green Globe certified, reviewed every year against 380 indicators spanning environmental management, social responsibility, cultural heritage, and economic performance. Read: Certifications ↗
In Chile, Nayara Alto Atacama holds the government's Sello S, awarded through SERNATUR, as the only luxury lodge in San Pedro de Atacama with the distinction. In Costa Rica, the Four Leaves Award recognizes the four tenets of sustainability behind the resorts' operations. And across the portfolio stand seven MICHELIN Keys, the MICHELIN Guide's distinction for the world's most outstanding hotels, including three at Nayara Springs, the only resort in Central America with Three Keys. Every one of these is re-earned annually. That is precisely why they matter. Read: 7 MICHELIN Keys ↗
Investing in People
In La Fortuna, where rising property costs and short-term rentals have been pricing out the people who keep the town running, Nayara is building a 40-home residential community, privately titled, targeted for early 2027. The deeds belong permanently to the residents, independent of employment, and most of the future homeowners are single mothers. Not staff housing. Inheritance. Read: Women's Empowerment ↗
The housing program sits on top of everyday commitments: more than 90 percent of the Costa Rica workforce lives in surrounding communities, with free transportation, health services, early education for employees' children, and support for Hogarcito de Niños, a local children's home. Housekeepers have become department heads here, line cooks have become chefs, and local guides have become conservation educators. Read: Rooted in Community ↗
The pattern repeats across the map: scholarships and Lickan-Antay heritage partnerships in the Atacama, Rapanui ownership and language revitalization on Easter Island, Ngäbe reef-builders and micro-grants in Bocas del Toro. A tourism economy that does not strengthen its town is not stable, and a destination whose people cannot afford to live there eventually stops being a destination.
Explore the Full Sustainability Series
Regeneration, community, and accountability across four countries.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an eco resort?+
What is regenerative tourism, and how is it different from sustainable tourism?+
Are Nayara's resorts carbon neutral?+
What sustainability certifications does Nayara hold?+
How does Nayara support the communities around its resorts?+
- Visit Costa Rica: Sustainability
- Smithsonian: Costa Rica's Renewable Energy
- CANAECO, Costa Rica's National Chamber of Ecotourism
- Mongabay: Beyond Sustainable Tourism in Costa Rica
- Sernatur: Chile's Sello S Certification
- Green Globe
- The MICHELIN Guide
- UNESCO: Rapa Nui National Park
- Caribbean Coral Restoration Center
- Forest Stewardship Council
Plan Your Sustainable Stay
Six resorts across Costa Rica, Panama, Chile, and Easter Island, where the wildlife finds you first.
