Costa Mar's hotels brace for an uncertain storm season

The morning forecast came through at breakfast. Rosa Méndez, who manages the Refugio Costero, a forty-room eco-lodge near the town of Boca Río, pulled up the federal weather service's ten-day outlook on her laptop and frowned. The model showed a developing system two thousand kilometres away that meteorologists were tracking but had not yet named. It was August 16, and the Atlantic hurricane season still had ten weeks to run.

Méndez has run the Refugio for twelve years. She knows the old rhythm: August and September are the quietest months, when occupancy drops to thirty percent and she uses the time for maintenance and staff training. October is busier. November is the beginning of the dry season, when tourists return. But the rhythm has been fraying. In 2023, a tropical storm in late October flooded three guest rooms and cancelled dive bookings for two weeks. In 2024, an unseasonably warm July brought jellyfish swarms that kept swimmers out of the water for a month. This year, the rainy season lingered longer than usual, and the sea temperature remains elevated.

She is not alone in her anxiety. Across Costa Mar, hotel operators, dive cooperatives, and small-boat captains are recalibrating their expectations and their finances. The region's tourism economy depends on predictability—on being able to promise guests that they will see clear water and calm seas in November, or that a June visit will be less crowded. That predictability is eroding.