Costa Rica's tourism industry has seen a drop due to the current international financial crisis and expectations on the secor have been lowered, the country's national toursim bureau said Monday.

A latest poll, taken among entrepreneurs, managers and officials related to tourism by the Costa Rican National Chamber of Tourism, showed that 66 percent of respondents have low trust in the sector for the first quarter of this year.

Some 45.5 percent of answerers said the secor had a "worse" performance in the first quarter than that in the same period of last year, while 13.6 percent said it "much worse."

More than half believed the situation would become even worse in the coming months.

Gonzalo Vargas, president of the tourism bureau, said the survey results indicated that the current economic situation is not encouraging for tourism.

The most affected fields concerning tourism were hotels, travel agencies, car rentals and tours operators.

(Xinhua News Agency?May 19, 2009)