Every year on March 8, the world pauses for International Women's Day: a moment to celebrate women's achievements and confront the structural barriers that still limit opportunity. Born from the labor and suffrage movements of the early twentieth century, the day remains both a celebration and a challenge: not merely to acknowledge progress, but to build the architecture that makes equality durable rather than symbolic.
For us at Nayara Resorts, this year's reflection is not abstract.
It is a neighborhood.
In La Fortuna, we are developing a 40-unit residential community: not employee housing, not a company benefit, but a permanent neighborhood of privately titled homes for local families. Approximately 150 residents. The first home scheduled for completion in early 2027. Each parcel legally owned by the individual resident, with ownership that is permanent and completely independent of employment at Nayara or anywhere else. If a resident works with us today and moves on tomorrow, the home remains theirs. That is not a caveat. It is the entire point.
Many of the future residents are single mothers working across the region's tourism economy, navigating a housing market that no longer reflects the wages it runs on. A stable home changes everything downstream: it replaces constant negotiation with certainty, converts monthly rent into inherited equity, and gives children the kind of groundedness that schooling alone cannot provide.
And predictability is power.
Our founder and CEO, Leo Ghitis, has spoken candidly about why housing became a priority in La Fortuna. He frames the project not as charity but as a structural correction inside a tourism economy that risks outpacing the people who sustain it.
▶ Listen to Leo explain the housing initiative on the Afar podcast.
Imagine a mother waking before sunrise to pack her child's school bag. Breakfast on the table. Uniform folded. The same ritual she has performed for years, but now without the quiet calculation in the background. No landlord deciding the future. No rent increase arriving without warning. No contingency plan forming while tying shoelaces.
The address is permanent. The walls are hers.
Her child grows up in a home that cannot be taken away by market forces. That stability is invisible to visitors, but it is the foundation of everything that follows: education, health, ambition, confidence. Ownership is not luxury. It is oxygen.
More than 90% of our Costa Rica team comes from the Arenal region. Many have worked alongside us for years. We know them, and through them, we know what housing insecurity costs: not in abstract economic terms, but in the energy spent managing uncertainty on top of everything else a working parent already carries.
We have seen people commute impossible distances because rents near town crept beyond their reach. We have watched families make decisions about their children's schools based on where they could afford to sleep. We have heard the version of the housing conversation that happens quietly, between trusted colleagues, the one that does not make it into any report.
What we are building is a response to that. Not a charitable gesture, but a structural one. When a family owns their home outright, the energy that went into housing uncertainty gets redirected into everything else: health, education, savings, ambition. Ownership is not aspirational. For the women in this community, it is protective.
In our earlier piece Rooted in Community, we explored hospitality as a living ecosystem. International Women's Day sharpens that lens: who benefits from the ecosystem, and who gets to own a piece of it?
Costa Rica welcomed approximately 2.69 million tourists in 2025, and the tourism market is projected to grow to USD 562 million by 2031. Tourism remains a cornerstone of the national economy, and the Arenal region sits at the center of that story.
Success generates opportunity. It also generates pressure.
The proliferation of unregulated vacation rentals is now a measurable driver of a broader housing crisis affecting working families across the country. We see this from the inside. La Fortuna is not a case study for us. It is where our colleagues live, where their children go to school, and where, increasingly, the economics of tourism are working against the people who make tourism possible.
When housing becomes unstable, the people who absorb the shock first are women. Mothers negotiate leases, relocate children, and carry the invisible labor of never quite knowing what next month looks like.
A tourism economy that does not stabilize housing stabilizes nothing.
This project does not exist in isolation. It belongs to a longer story about what Costa Rica chose to be. In 1948, following a brief civil war, the country abolished its standing army. Funds that would have sustained military infrastructure were redirected into public education, healthcare, and civic development. It remains one of the few nations in the world without a permanent military, a decision recognized by UNESCO as part of the country's documentary heritage, and celebrated internationally as a model of governance.
That was not a symbolic act. It permanently reordered national priorities. How a single decision in 1948 changed the arc of Central America is still being written. When a country invests in education and community infrastructure over militarization, women benefit disproportionately. Stability compounds through households. Children grow up inside systems designed to support them.
And infrastructure determines who survives pressure.
The housing initiative in La Fortuna belongs to that lineage. It is a continuation of a national pattern: redirect resources toward the structures that protect everyday life, and trust that the returns arrive in ways that balance sheets cannot capture.
This is not employer housing. It is not a retention strategy. It is privately owned property, built for the La Fortuna community and structured so that ownership belongs to the resident, permanently, regardless of where they work or what changes in their life.
We purchased the land and subdivided it. We are extending infrastructure for electricity and water. We worked with local authorities and a Costa Rican bank to help families access the financing needed to build their homes. Each parcel is legally titled to the individual resident.
The gentrification pressure reshaping communities across Costa Rica is real, and it is accelerating. The only durable response is ownership. When a family owns their home, the market cannot displace them. Children grow up in a house their mother holds the title to. Assets accumulate instead of dissolving into someone else's rental income. A family builds equity instead of uncertainty.
When Nayara Gardens underwent renovation, we preserved furniture and fixtures rather than discarding them. Those materials are being upcycled to furnish the new homes, a small gesture that closes the loop between the guest experience and the lives that make it possible.
The housing project begins from a simple principle: work should open a path to ownership.
International Women's Day asks a question that sounds simple and is not: what does empowerment actually look like when it is translated into structure?
For us, after years in this community, the answer is concrete. It looks like a land title in a mother's name. It looks like a construction plan drawn up for a family that has always rented. It looks like keys handed over without conditions.
We are not offering a benefit or a program. We are participating in a community that has given us everything, and trying to give something back that lasts. A house is not just shelter. It is predictability. It is leverage. It is the difference between surviving an economy and having a permanent place inside it.
Hospitality, real hospitality, does not end at the guest room door. It extends into the town, into the school, into the home of the person who made that guest feel welcome.
In La Fortuna, that commitment now has an address.
What is Nayara's housing project in La Fortuna, Costa Rica? A 40-unit residential community being developed in La Fortuna in the Arenal region. The project provides long-term, titled ownership for families in the La Fortuna community, not as employer housing but as permanent private property.
Why is this project focused on women? Many of the future residents are single mothers who work in the region's hospitality sector and face disproportionate housing instability. Titled homeownership directly strengthens their economic security, creates generational assets, and gives their families a foundation that employment alone cannot provide.
Is housing tied to employment at Nayara Resorts? No. The community is open to La Fortuna families broadly, not limited to Nayara employees. Each parcel is privately titled to the resident. Ownership is completely independent of employment status. If a resident leaves their position at Nayara or never worked at Nayara, the home is theirs.
How does Nayara support local communities in La Fortuna? More than 90% of our Costa Rica team comes from the surrounding Arenal region. The housing project is one part of a broader commitment to ensuring that tourism generates lasting local benefit: not just employment, but permanent assets, community stability, and genuine participation in the economy that tourism creates.
How does housing connect to sustainable tourism in Costa Rica? Environmental sustainability depends on stable communities. If the community that sustains tourism cannot afford to live where tourism happens, nothing else holds. Ownership is the only durable protection against displacement in a market reshaped by short-term rental demand.
How has tourism affected housing costs in La Fortuna? Rents in La Fortuna have risen significantly as the region's tourism profile has grown, making stable housing increasingly difficult for local workers to access. Across Costa Rica, the expansion of short-term vacation rentals has removed long-term housing stock from the market, contributing to a displacement crisis that disproportionately affects the working families who power the industry.