The Swell Show

Edition 0 · Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Half throttle: at most half of the area's places will be booked tomorrow.

Deep green season. Not a week to add shifts or overbuy; it is a week to catch the demand being lost to a booking rule.

Morning, line-up.

Today’s set

48%occupancy ceiling for the area's places tomorrow.
773places free out of 1,492 in the area, searching 3 nights.
381if you search a single night: half the supply disappears.
25%of hotels with no rooms left tomorrow.
91%already booked for New Year, 11 weeks out.

The wave nobody sees

The single-night trap

Search one night and you see 381 rentals free. Search three and you see 773. Almost 400 places are free tomorrow but require a minimum stay, so for the one-night traveler they simply don't exist.

For a place with a three-night minimum, opening short weekday stays is the easiest demand to catch this month.

Where it breaks

The cheapest places empty out first

In green season, budget places are the ones emptying out most. Almost half of what's booked for tomorrow (49%) costs more than US$150 a night.

Budgetup to US$60
31%
Mid-rangeUS$61 to 150
50%
UpscaleUS$151 to 350
51%
Luxuryover US$350
60%

Tomorrow’s occupancy by nightly rate, across every place in the area classified one by one.

Play of the week

Lodging
If you require 3 nights or more, open 1- and 2-night stays on weekdays.
Restaurants
Low-season shifts and three days of purchasing. With pricier places fuller than budget ones, this week it pays more to take care of the menu than to push volume deals.
Shops and services
A good time for offers aimed at residents and long-stay visitors: they keep the till going while short-stay tourism is slow.

See you in the water.

Occupancy = 1 − places free for 3 nights ÷ total inventory. It’s a ceiling: some places block dates without being booked. Sources: the main booking platforms, Open-Meteo and the Central Bank of Costa Rica. Measured October 13 at 6:00.