More and better roads in the district of Capira have facilitated the conversion of more than 65 farms into rural tourism destinations.
In the past four years this business has grown substantially due to the construction of new roads in the area. "... There are 25 farms in Capira accredited by the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MIDA), while another 40 are still undergoing restructuring," said the head of the program for Agritourism in the west of Panama, Ruby Hidalgo to Prensa.com.
This tourism subsector is just starting to develop, and it is expected that it will receive a major boost from the new airports in the interior of the country.
Capital.com.pa reports: "... the challenge now is to facilitate access to credit and for Panamanian producers to learn to do business, because sometimes they do not know what to charge for the service they are providing, an area where foreign entrepreneurs are ahead of them. "
Tourist companies believe that sustainability is not an easy process, however it can be a good idea if it is about doing business.
Katiana Murillo in her article in Baños, reviews the opinion of some companies who participated in Expotur 2013, regarding the question of whether sustainability can be good business for tourism entrepreneurs.
For example, Hotel Arenal Kioro (4 leaves from the CST) says that travel agencies support hotels with green policies, in Europe there are agencies that only work with sustainable hotels and in the U.S. there is a move in this direction.It is also a way to educate the customer and employees, which creates motivation and both of these have an impact on savings.
In coffee plantations additional business are appearing such as restaurants or hotels which add value to the properties and enables growers to face the bad times of low prices of grain.
For over 5 years, many coffee plantations have gone beyond the traditional cultivation and sale of grain, with owners opening small businesses to obtain additional income or to publicize the quality of their main product.