November is when people start planning Costa Rica properly, which makes it the right month to explain how this coast actually books — what genuinely goes early, what you can leave, and the one thing about 2027 that most people have not noticed yet.
The calendar, first
Costa Rica’s dry season runs mid-December to late April, and the tourism trade generally treats high season as November through early April. Inside that stretch, demand is not flat. It has three distinct peaks:
- Christmas and New Year — the hardest week of the year to get, anywhere on this coast.
- US spring break, mid-February through mid-March — a rolling wave rather than a single week, because school districts stagger.
- Semana Santa — Holy Week, which is where 2027 gets interesting.
The 2027 wrinkle nobody is talking about
Easter Sunday 2027 falls on March 28. Holy Thursday is March 25 and Good Friday March 26, both national holidays here. In practical terms Semana Santa 2027 runs roughly Saturday March 20 through Sunday March 28.
That is early — more than a week earlier than 2026, which fell on April 5. And that matters more than it sounds.
In a normal year, Semana Santa lands in early April, on the shoulder, after spring break has mostly cleared. In 2027 it lands inside peak dry season, stacked on top of the tail of US spring break. March 2027 is going to be the most compressed month on this coast in several years.
Semana Santa is already the single tightest week outside Christmas. In 2026 the Costa Rican Chamber of Hotels surveyed 66 properties and found Guanacaste running at 91% occupancy — the highest of any region in the country, against a national average of 75%. And the week itself is genuinely disruptive if you have not planned for it: government offices, banks and many supermarkets close or cut hours, the country is in shutdown mode by Wednesday, and drive times to the beach roughly double.
If March 2027 is your window, treat it as a Christmas-grade booking, not a spring-break one.
What to reserve now
The house itself. Always first, and this is not us talking our own book — it is how the numbers work. Lead time on vacation rentals scales with size: one-bedroom properties book about 41 days out, six-bedroom properties about 83, because a group of eight has to align eight calendars and collect deposits before anyone can commit. Big houses are the scarce item, not flights.
For Christmas and New Year, the guidance is four to six months, with festive inventory often filling by October.
Semana Santa 2027 and Christmas 2027. Now, or as close to now as your group can manage.
Anything requiring a permit or a cap. The Ostional turtle arribada runs guided groups capped at nine people, and slots go quickly when a large event is underway. Rincón de la Vieja has moved to online-only tickets. Neither is something to sort out the morning of.
What can wait
Most excursions. Catamarans, fishing charters, zip lines, Rincón day trips — a week or two out is fine outside the three peaks, and the house manager books them for you once you are here and have read the weather.
Restaurants. With a chef in the house you need roughly one or two reservations a week, and Coco is not a town that requires planning.
The rental car — sometimes. Rates are better booked ahead in December through March. In green season you can often decide late. Just remember that whatever you are quoted online excludes the mandatory liability insurance, which runs $10–25 a day and cannot be declined.
House or flight first?
House.
Liberia’s route map keeps getting deeper — arrivals through the Guanacaste airport were up 16.3% in early 2026, outpacing San José, and the seasonal roster roughly doubles from December. Seats are the flexible item. A four-bedroom villa on the specific week your whole family can travel is not.
The practical sequence: agree the week, hold the house, then watch fares.
Does waiting ever pay?
Yes, but only in the season you are probably not asking about.
Last-minute rates soften meaningfully when occupancy is weak, and rental-industry data puts that at 15–20% or more — but “primarily during shoulder seasons.” That matches what we see here. In the green season, hotels across the country were discounting 10–30% mid-year and half of reservations were unconfirmed.
In February, waiting does not get you a discount. It gets you nothing at all.
Two smaller things worth knowing
The exchange rate is working against visitors right now. The colón has strengthened sharply — the dollar fell from about 497 colónes at the start of 2026 to 449 by September. Nothing priced locally changed; you simply need more dollars to pay it. Locking a dollar-denominated villa rate early is worth more than usual in this environment.
2027 is politically quiet. Costa Rica held its general election in February 2026 and does not vote again until 2030, so there is no election-year disruption to plan around.
The short version
Book the house first and book it early, especially for March 2027, which is going to be tighter than any March in recent memory. Leave the excursions. Watch the flights. And if your dates are flexible, look hard at late November and early December — dry weather, no crowds, and none of this applies.
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The post Booking High Season 2027: What to Reserve Now and What Can Wait appeared first on Mar-a-Selva.