C.R. Referrals Travel

Costa Rica Referrals Travel is located in Atenas, Costa Rica. This is a small mountain town outside the central valley. Atenas is a farming town, a close knit  community where most everyone knows each other. My name is Catalina, I started my company in 2008 and have loved every moment. We are a boutique travel company, we believe in quality over quantity to ensure the highest quality in all of our custom Costa Rica adventures.

Our company is made of 3 departments:

Trip Planning/Wedding Planning-  Our travel planning department is headed up by James Armstrong, under him he has anywhere from 1 - 3 travel planners depending on the time of the year. James alone plans 80% of our trips. Our planning department is open Monday - Friday from 9am - 7pm. They are in charge of dreaming up all of the adventures!

I handle all the wedding planning myself, I usually take 1 or 2 a month these days. 🙂

Operations - Our operations department is where a lot of the magic happens and their job is crucial. They are in charge of making all the reservations and collecting all the confirmations. They create all travel documents and work with the planning department + accounting department. They are in charge of running the trips, trip monitoring, and providing 24 hour trip support to all of our clients. Operations works 7 days a week in the office from 9am - 7pm and operations is on call 24 hours a day.

Accounting - Accounting processes all payments, makes all payments to the hotels and tour vendors, and creates all invoices and receipts.

Hi! My name is Catalina Cuervo! Thank you for stopping by and getting to know us. We are a boutique planner located in the mountain town of Atenas, Costa Rica. My husband and I have lived here in Atenas for 20 years and we both love our community. I started Costa Rica Referrals Travel in 2008, I had just left my job in management at Los Sueños Marriott in Heradurra, and I had an idea to start a small company of my very own.

We first started as a referral service as our original name suggests. 🙂 But I wanted to do more, I wanted to start creating trips and adventures to share with other travelers. We quickly moved to become a full planning service in 2009. Now, with my husband, and a dedicated team, we help travelers from around the world get to know Costa Rica and have planned thousands of trips over the years.

My husband Isham and I are passionate about animal welfare. This was one of the things that brought us together all those years ago. We are involved in animal rescue and rehabilitation here in Costa Rica and abroad, our company Costa Rica Referrals Travel helps to make that possible and we thank each and every one of you who have traveled with us.

Many years ago I started creating Elopement Adventure trips for couples who wanted to do something a little different. Turns out I love planning weddings, and loved being able to provide wedding planning and travel planning under one roof. With that Elope in Costa Rica was born! I really planning elopements and weddings of all sizes, and my travel team takes care of all the travel planning. It is a match made n heaven 🙂

Living here in Costa Rica, of all places you can live on Earth, is a blessing. I hope we get to introduce our country to you!

Destination Knowledge – Knowing the many different areas of the country, when best to visit, what areas to avoid, these are some of the key elements when looking at a destination specialist. We are located in Costa Rica and do regular inspection tours to hotels and tours throughout the year. We stay on top of what’s new and what is happening on the ground on a daily basis. This is what’s called “intimate destination knowledge” and it is not something you can get from any company located outside Costa Rica. You want to get the most out of your time and money, the best way to do this is with an expert travel planner. We live and breathe travel; we want to share our knowledge of Costa Rica and the many experiences with you.

Expert Planning– As mentioned, to get the most out of your vacation you need experts on the ground. Handpicked guides and drivers are important to the quality of a trip. It is not enough to know the name of a good company; you need to know the specific names of the guides and drivers that show the highest levels of service. This type of knowledge you cannot find from discount websites or travel consolidators. They want to sell you a nice trip but the finer details are lost on them, they deal in volume and quality comes second. Knowing which specific guides to ask for, which specific drivers to book, and how best to put all of the logistics together is what separates an okay vacation to having one of the best vacations of your life. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details, and in travel, this is especially true.

Boutique is Better – Companies like ours are considered boutique travel planners. For us, anything under 10 employees is a boutique. We have resisted growing the company past a certain point so that the level of care and service does not suffer. It is inevitable, the larger a company gets, the more the company loses heart and the more things can start to go wrong. In any given month, our company will only run a set number of trips. We will not over extend ourselves for the sake of a making a sale, the clients we take get our full attention. When you call us, you will always talk to a human being, no machines, no menus to navigate, just a travel planner on the phone willing to help. Customer service is job #1 for us and we take our work seriously. We run at capacity most months of the year, it is first come first serve and if we have reached our limit on any given month, we will refer you to one of our colleagues that we know and trust.

Trip Monitoring – Part of our commitment to our clients is in the support we give while on the ground. We monitor each and every one of our trips as it unfolds. In our trip monitoring, we call ahead to the tour operator the day before every transfer and tour to make sure there are no changes in the time schedule. Several things can happen beyond anyone’s control that can throw a trip off, road closures, bad weather; with our monitoring program, this is not a possibility. We will alert you in real time to any changes in the trip schedule and make adjustments so that your vacation runs smooth from start to finish.

Trip Support – You can reach us 24 hours a day while you are in Costa Rica. We have several support lines and you can always reach us by email.

Support Line #1 - 506-2446-5339

Support Line #2 - 506-8358-8350

Support Line #3 - Your travel planners direct line in their email signature. This is the planners cel phone found in the email signature of your travel planner. You can also use this for support if the other lines do not go through for some reason.

Vacation Guarantee – If  there is any part of the trip that is unsatisfactory let us know and we will work to get you refunded. For a tour canceled due to weather a replacement tour or refund will be offered. We stand by the trips we create and will always work on your behalf. We work for you, not the hotels and tour operators.

Peace of Mind – We are located right here in Costa Rica, our services are tried and tested again and again and we have some of the best guides and drivers at our disposal in the country. All of our vendors are fully licensed, insured, and registered with the ICT, Costa Ricas governing tourism body. C.R. Referrals Travel are members of CANATUR the Costa Rica Chamber of Tourism and members of CATUCA, the Tourism Chamber of Atenas.