¿Un lugar en el sol para quién? El turismo residencial y sus consecuencias para el desarrollo equitativo y sostenible en Guanacaste, Costa Rica 

This is a article based on research by Femke van Noorloos. It looks at the impacts of residential tourism in Guanacaste, Costa Rica and its relationship with development. The full article, in Spanish, appears here. I have translated the first two paragraph of the article to give a flavour of what it includes:

Residential tourism is advancing rapidly in developing countries. It refers to the phenomenon where people settle temporarily or permanently in a tourist destination and buy a house, apartment or land. Often they are people of European or American origin migrating to ‘the south’ in search of a more relaxed lifestyle, lower cost of living, better weather, etc..

Residential tourism is interconnected with the large increase in foreign and domestic investment in land. Therefore, it is a phenomenon relevant to the current debate on ‘land grab’ or ‘land grabbing’. Particularly in Africa, increased land acquisitions for large scale agriculture and bio-fuels is a controversial development: such investments can cause pressure on land rights and food security of the local population. However, the pressure on land markets is also important in other continents, and it is not only due to agriculture and biofuels, but also are related to other processes such as urbanization, population growth, mining , nature conservation and residential tourism. Residential tourism and foreign investment have grown rapidly in the last decade in several countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Unlike traditional tourism short-term, focusing on services such as accommodation and restaurants, residential tourism has more to do with real estate investment and development. This type of tourism is an urgent issue in the study of land markets and international development.