Nowadays tourism in Nicaragua represents the second largest industry in the nation, tourists from all over the world are interested in exploring the diverse options it offer, from ecotourism to surf camps or luxury beach resorts, the country offers a wide option of entertainment to satisfy the market needs, however still more work to be done to potentiate Nicaragua as a travel hotspot and having a more competitive industry.
It is true that the tourism has continued growing over the past five years and is expected to continue growing even more with the construction of an interoceanic canal that will connect the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean, yet the tourism industry is not completely prepared to deal with an increment on demand and take advantages of the opportunities that the canal will bring. Not only bad managing practices or inefficient marketing strategies from both private and public sector threaten the growth of the tourism but the poor infrastructure and lack of knowledge on ICT.
Through detailed analysis about the current situation of tourism in Nicaragua, this document will serve as an instrument to provide a general overview of the tourism industry to identify effective strategies and mechanism that foster the growth of the touristic sector of Nicaragua.
This paper will focus on the factors that have an impact on the competitiveness of the tourism industry of Nicaragua; at the same time, it examine successful cases from Central America that can help obtain insights on how an industry can be more competitive.
Striving for competing in bigger market shares should be a consideration not only for developed economies but also for the least advantaged nations. Unlike Costa Rica and Panama where governments invest on factors that improve its competitiveness, Nicaragua government not even have a framework to measure competitiveness in tourism, therefore the interest on analyzing the industry and proposing strategies to leverage the current opportunities is presented in this document.

Nowadays tourism in Nicaragua represents the second largest industry in the nation, tourists from all over the world are interested in exploring the diverse options it offer, from ecotourism to surf camps or luxury beach resorts, the country offers a wide option of entertainment to satisfy the market needs, however still more work to be done to potentiate Nicaragua as a travel hotspot and having a more competitive industry.
It is true that the tourism has continued growing over the past five years and is expected to continue growing even more with the construction of an interoceanic canal that will connect the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean, yet the tourism industry is not completely prepared to deal with an increment on demand and take advantages of the opportunities that the canal will bring. Not only bad managing practices or inefficient marketing strategies from both private and public sector threaten the growth of the tourism but the poor infrastructure and lack of knowledge on ICT.
Through detailed analysis about the current situation of tourism in Nicaragua, this document will serve as an instrument to provide a general overview of the tourism industry to identify effective strategies and mechanism that foster the growth of the touristic sector of Nicaragua.
This paper will focus on the factors that have an impact on the competitiveness of the tourism industry of Nicaragua; at the same time, it examine successful cases from Central America that can help obtain insights on how an industry can be more competitive.
Striving for competing in bigger market shares should be a consideration not only for developed economies but also for the least advantaged nations. Unlike Costa Rica and Panama where governments invest on factors that improve its competitiveness, Nicaragua government not even have a framework to measure competitiveness in tourism, therefore the interest on analyzing the industry and proposing strategies to leverage the current opportunities is presented in this document.

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Nicaragua: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper— Progress Report on National Human Development Plan as of 2010. (2011). International Monetary Fund.
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