The airport on Ometepe Island has infrastructure which is ready but remains closed and unable to arouse the interest of any airlines
La Paloma Airport was presented as an opportunity to increase the flow of tourists and improve the economy in the area but it has not yet been opened.
The plan was for the airport, in which $10.9 million was invested and which is located on Ometepe island, to be operational from the last quarter of 2012.
With an investment of $327 million, eleven new hotel projects are to be incorporated into the country's tourism sector.
Data provided by the Chamber of Tourism of Nicaragua (Canatur) reveals that the departments which have attracted most of the investment in the construction of new hotels are Managua, León, Chinandega and Rivas.
One example of the large investments in hotels can be found in the Nicaraguan Pacific, where $250 million has been invested in building the largest hotel project in the country. "The first stage includes the boutique hotel Mukul, which has 39 rooms, 16 beach villas and 23 mountain huts, built on 1,600 acres (about 650 hectares), with an investment of $150 million," noted an article in Elnuevodiario.com.ni.
The capital, Managua, will increase its supply of hotel rooms from 2013 when three new hotels will be built.
Located in the area of the Rotunda de Jean Paul Genie, in the next few months construction will begin on a Holiday Inn hotel , said Benjamin Spears, president of the Nicaraguan Chamber of Construction.
"Jose Enrique Solórzano, operations manager of Holiday Inn , also in the capital, said that the new hotel of the same brand belongs to other investors." It is a Salvadoran group and I think it's a Holiday Inn Express, that is to say, a bed and breakfast '", writes Génesis Hernandez for Laprensa.com.ni.
Between January and May, tourism investment in Nicaragua was 5 times higher than the same period of 2008.
Attracted by the benefits obtained through Law 306, also known as Stimulus Law for the Tourism Industry, 10 new projects where approved so far in 2009, 6 of them are hotels.
Raúl Calvet is the president of Calvet and Associates, a company that assists and advices investors developing projects in Nicaragua.
Tourism to beaches and nature reserves in Carazo on the Pacific Coast will benefit from the 33 kilometers of road construction.
The investment was around $10 million in loans provided by the World Bank, whose representative, Coleen Lithjohn, said she was satisfied with the time and manner in which the construction was done.
In an article published in El Nuevo Diario, Tania Goussen Acevedo reported that Lucy Valenti, President of the Chamber of Tourism, said that she is "confident that domestic and foreign visitors will come to the beaches and natural reserves of Carazo. With the rehabilitation of the section, more than five thousand people will benefit, and the tourism areas that include Tupilapa, El Tamarindo, La Flor River and La Makina and El Platanal reserves will be strengthened."
More than 60 Nicaraguan tourism projects valued at a total of some US$1 billion are on hold because Congress has failed to agree on a law to protect investments on the nation's coasts.
"We can only hope the law gets passed no later than June, because projects are being held up all over the place," said Lucy Valenti, president of the national tourism chamber, Canatur.