Building resorts

A few days ago I wrote about the construction of a tower of luxury apartments in San Salvador. A similar type of project was described in this article today on the BBC website:
On a nearby headland, in the shade of some palm trees overlooking Las Flores beach, Rodrigo Barraza checks his plans and looks out across an area where the dense foliage has been cleared. He is the architect of a new development of eight luxury villas and a spa. In the complex, which is called Utopia, the owners will each have their own gardens, swimming pools and views of the ocean.

It is the first such building of its kind in this region. They are for sale off-plan within the next few weeks with an asking price of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr Barraza says that sustainable building methods are being used. He says: "This is a hidden place, and we want to keep it from mass tourism and commercial profit... We are trying to keep it in its natural state."

Despite Mr Barraza's hopes, there are six "mega-projects" in the pipeline for El Salvador, which will bring thousands more hotel rooms and several golf courses.

These secluded beaches are no longer just for the adventurous surfers.

In real estate, announcements of planned projects always greatly outnumber the quantity of projects actually built, so this many not represent the near future of El Salvador's coastline. Large, beach front resort development can risk ecological harms, spoiling natural beauty of beaches, and making the beaches the property of only a few. Yet such resort projects can produce both direct and indirect employment for thousands. Like building a 28 floor tower of luxury apartments, the investment in resort properties is a vote of confidence in El Salvador.

The rest of the BBC article touches on other forms of tourism in El Salvador -- visitng the historic sites of the civil war and surfing the world class waves.

Comments

Hodad said…
could not keep this a secret forever
there are still secret surf spots
he he

lets us not turn into Costa Rica though
which is for fat ass gringos now what Cuba was before the revolution

and be glad gambling was voted out
Anonymous said…
El Salvador need tourism, and the dollars it brings to the economy, and tourists need someplace to go and someplace to stay. It's a beautiful country and safer than a lot of people give it credit for. I hope more and more of this takes place in the coming years.