A hotel that opened barely nine months ago is already collecting trophies. Santa Lucía Jungle Hacienda, a Marriott Autograph Collection property in the small Pacific-coast town of Tárcoles, was named Costa Rica's Leading Boutique Hotel 2026 and Mexico & Central America's Leading New Hotel 2026 at the World Travel Awards. The winners were announced at a ceremony in Jamaica on October 11.
The hotel sits in Puntarenas province on Costa Rica's Central Pacific coast, on a 371-acre property of tropical forest with 84 rooms built in traditional hacienda style. Its biggest selling points are next door: Carara National Park, famous for scarlet macaws, and the Tárcoles River, where hulking American crocodiles lounge on the banks in numbers few places can match. It's also close to beaches, fishing communities and wildlife tours, without the crowds of Manuel Antonio or the Nicoya Peninsula hotspots.
General manager José Eduardo Arteaga frames the wins as a chance to put Tárcoles on the map for international visitors and to show what Costa Rica offers beyond its best-known destinations. The hotel leans into birdwatching, guided nature walks, Costa Rican cooking classes and cultural activities, plus a spa and restaurants. It also markets itself as a "regenerative" tourism operation, hiring locally and buying from nearby businesses — a claim worth noting the property hasn't had independently verified, but the local-employment model is central to its pitch.
The timing fits a broader boom. Costa Rica's tourism institute counted more than 1.7 million international arrivals in the first half of 2026, up 7% year on year, and the central bank reports visitors spent around $3.36 billion in that period — an 8.5% jump. Tourism supports roughly 168,000 direct jobs, so a small town gaining a marquee hotel matters beyond the lobby.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple: an award-winning, nature-focused base has appeared in a corner of Costa Rica that most itineraries skip. If you've always wanted to see crocodiles the size of small cars, photograph macaws at dawn or eat your way through a cooking class in a working village, Tárcoles now has a genuinely comfortable place to do it from — and you'd be ahead of the crowd that the awards will inevitably bring.
