Nosara Airbnb Occupancy Rates by Neighborhood: Guiones vs. Pelada vs. Garza (2026)

Ask five different Nosara property managers what occupancy rate to expect on a short-term rental, and you'll get five different answers, because the honest answer depends entirely on which street the property sits on. A one-bedroom two blocks from the surf break in Playa Guiones and a three-bedroom villa tucked behind the tide pools in Playa Pelada are both technically "Nosara rentals," but they compete in completely different markets with different guests, different rate structures, and different occupancy math. Buyers who run their pro forma off a single blended "Nosara average" number are usually working from the wrong figure before they even close.

📊 Nosara-wide (Feb 2025–Jan 2026): 39.8% average occupancy, $411 ADR, $38,380 average annual revenue per listing across 895 active listings. Playa Guiones Sur specifically ran 60% occupancy at a $254 ADR over the same period, nearly the inverse ratio of the wider market.

That gap between the neighborhood average and the town-wide average is not a rounding error. It is the single most useful number for a buyer trying to decide where to put money to work.

The Nosara-Wide Numbers (2026)

Before breaking things down by neighborhood, here's the baseline most brokers and blogs quote when they say "Nosara occupancy rate." It's real, it's current, and it's also nearly useless on its own because it blends surf-town studios with hilltop villas that rarely fill a calendar but command four-figure nightly rates when they do.

Metric	Nosara-Wide Average (2025–2026)
Occupancy rate	39.8%
Average Daily Rate (ADR)	$411
Average annual revenue	$38,380
Active listings	895
Peak season occupancy (Jan–Mar)	56.7%
Peak season ADR	$490
Low season occupancy (May, Sep–Oct)	30.0%
Low season ADR	$367
Best month	March
Worst month	September
International guest share	~92%

💡 Key insight: A "39.8% occupancy" headline number is an average of very different sub-markets. Treat it as a market ceiling check, not a forecast for your specific address.

Playa Guiones: High Volume, Compressed Rates

Playa Guiones is Nosara's rental engine. It has the most inventory (646 active listings in the Guiones Sur zone alone), the most repeat surf and yoga traffic, and the shortest distance between "book" and "arrive" of any zone in town. That volume is exactly why it behaves differently from the rest of Nosara.

Guiones Sur posted 60% occupancy over the trailing year, well above the town-wide 39.8%, but at a $254 ADR, roughly 38% below the town-wide $411 average. The math still works in the properties' favor (Airbtics puts Guiones in the top 1% of short-term rental yield markets in Central America), but it works through volume, not price. A studio or one-bedroom walking distance to the beach break fills far more often than it sits at a premium rate, because it's competing against 600+ nearby listings chasing the same surf-and-wellness traveler.

What this means for a buyer:

• Guiones rewards properties that book often at a moderate rate, not properties that hold out for peak pricing
• Smaller, walkable, well-photographed units tend to outperform larger properties on occupancy here
• With 646+ listings in one zone, differentiation (design, amenities, host responsiveness) matters more than location alone
• International demand (92%+) means pricing in USD and syncing calendars across Airbnb, Vrbo, and direct booking channels is not optional

See our full Playa Guiones neighborhood guide and the Guiones vs. Pelada comparison for the lifestyle side of this decision.

💡 Key insight: Guiones is a volume market. Buyers should model revenue on frequent bookings at a moderate nightly rate, not a handful of peak-season splashes.

Playa Pelada: The Scarcity Premium

Playa Pelada sits a fifteen-minute walk (or five-minute bike ride) from Guiones, but it has never chased the same rental volume. Inventory is a fraction of Guiones', the beach itself is smaller and calmer (tide pools, not a beach break), and the buyer profile skews toward families and retirees over surf travelers.

There isn't a published Pelada-specific occupancy dataset the way there is for Guiones, and any blog that hands you a precise number for Pelada alone is guessing. What the data does support directionally: lower listing density plus a quieter, more residential feel tends to produce fewer total bookings but a higher price tolerance per booking, the opposite lever from Guiones. Owners in Pelada are generally pricing for the guest who wants privacy and is willing to pay for it, not the guest comparison-shopping forty nearly identical surf condos.

What this means for a buyer:

• Expect a smaller, less liquid rental pool, but less direct competition per listing
• Pelada properties tend to perform better as longer-stay, higher-ADR rentals than as high-turnover short stays
• Because listing counts are lower, a single well-run property can capture a larger share of local demand than the same property would in Guiones
• Guest reviews and word-of-mouth carry more weight in a thinner market

See the Playa Pelada neighborhood guide for the full picture on lot availability and price points.

💡 Key insight: Pelada is not a worse rental market than Guiones, it's a different one. Fewer bookings at a stronger rate can produce comparable, or better, net income once management costs are factored in.

Garza: The Micro-Market

Garza is the smallest of the three by inventory, and it's the hardest to generalize about because there simply isn't enough listing volume to produce a statistically meaningful occupancy number yet. It's a working fishing village with a growing pocket of boutique and luxury development, roughly 15-20 minutes south of Guiones.

What Garza offers instead of scale is exclusivity. Buyers here are typically not chasing occupancy percentage at all, they're buying a second home or a boutique rental with a handful of comparable properties in the entire zone, which means far less rate compression than Guiones and effectively no "race to the bottom" on nightly pricing.

What this means for a buyer:

• Treat Garza as a long-term appreciation and lifestyle play first, rental income second
• Rental comps are thin, so underwrite conservatively and lean on a local property manager's actual booking history rather than area-wide averages
• Fewer competing listings means a well-marketed property can command outsized attention relative to its size

See the Garza neighborhood guide and the Garza vs. Guiones comparison for more on how the two areas differ beyond rental math.

💡 Key insight: Garza is underweighted in every Nosara-wide dataset because it's underweighted in inventory. That's a data gap, not proof the market underperforms.

What Drives the Occupancy Gap

The Guiones-vs-rest-of-Nosara gap isn't random. Three structural factors explain most of it:

1. Distance to the surf break. Guiones Sur properties within a few blocks of the beach book on shorter lead times and more frequently, because surf and yoga travelers plan trips around swell and season, not around a specific property.
2. Listing density. More competing inventory forces ADR down even as it pulls occupancy up, guests have more options, so hosts compete on price and calendar flexibility rather than holding a premium rate.
3. Guest type. Guiones skews toward shorter, activity-driven stays. Pelada and Garza skew toward longer, quieter stays, families, remote workers, and retirees who book fewer, longer blocks.

Zone	Relative Inventory	Occupancy Tendency	ADR Tendency	Best Fit
Playa Guiones	Highest	Higher	Lower	High-turnover STR, surf/wellness travelers
Playa Pelada	Moderate-low	Lower	Higher	Longer stays, families, privacy-seekers
Garza	Lowest	Data-limited	Likely higher (less compression)	Boutique/luxury, lifestyle-first buyers

💡 Key insight: Higher occupancy and higher ADR rarely show up in the same property. Decide which lever you're optimizing for before you shop, not after you own.

Seasonality Applies to All Three Zones

Regardless of neighborhood, Nosara's calendar shape doesn't change: January through March is peak (56.7% town-wide occupancy, $490 ADR), and May and September through October are the trough (30% occupancy, $367 ADR), with March as the single best month and September the worst. Any occupancy percentage quoted without a date range attached should be treated as incomplete. A property manager telling you "we run 65% occupancy" needs to specify whether that's a February number or a September number, because the swing between those two months is roughly 27 points town-wide. For a full month-by-month breakdown, see our Nosara rental income calendar.

💡 Key insight: Ask for trailing-twelve-month occupancy, not a peak-season snapshot, from any owner or manager quoting rental performance.

How to Verify Before You Buy

Published market averages, including the ones in this article, are a starting point for underwriting, not a substitute for property-level diligence. Before you buy expecting rental income:

• Request actual booking history from the seller or current property manager, not projected income
• Confirm the property's short-term rental legal status under current Nosara/Nicoya Peninsula regulations, see our short-term rental regulations guide
• Model net income, not gross, after property management fees, cleaning, IVA and rental income tax, and platform commissions, see our Nosara vacation rental net income breakdown
• Decide your strategy up front: long-term tenant, short-term rental, or a hybrid, since the right property differs by zone, see our long-term vs. short-term rental strategy guide
• Walk the comp set in person, not just online. Listing photos rarely show distance to the beach accurately, and that distance is the single biggest driver of occupancy in Guiones specifically

Does Higher Occupancy Always Mean a Better Investment?

No, and this is where buyers most often misread the data. Occupancy rate measures how often a property has a guest in it, not how much money it makes. Run the two zones side by side on a simplified back-of-envelope basis:

• A Guiones unit at 60% occupancy and a $254 ADR grosses roughly $55,600 a year (365 nights × 0.60 × $254)
• A hypothetical Pelada unit at 35% occupancy and a $500 ADR grosses roughly $63,875 a year (365 nights × 0.35 × $500)

Same rough revenue neighborhood, arrived at through opposite strategies, and before either one is adjusted for management fees, cleaning turnover costs, and vacancy risk. Guiones' higher occupancy also means more turnovers, more cleaning fees, and more wear on furnishings, costs that a simple occupancy percentage doesn't capture. This is exactly why gross revenue and net income can tell two different stories depending on the zone, and why the net income breakdown guide matters as much as the occupancy headline.

💡 Key insight: Compare projected annual revenue and net income across zones, not occupancy percentage alone. A "lower occupancy" property can out-earn a "higher occupancy" one once turnover costs are factored in.

The Bottom Line

There is no single "Nosara occupancy rate." There's a Guiones number built on volume and compressed pricing, a Pelada and Garza reality built on scarcity and higher per-booking rates, and a blended town-wide figure that describes neither market accurately. If you're buying for rental income, the zone you choose should match the strategy you actually want to run, high-frequency bookings at moderate rates, or fewer bookings at a premium, because trying to run a Guiones-style volume strategy on a Pelada or Garza property (or vice versa) is the fastest way to underperform your own pro forma.

Browse current Nosara listings across all three zones, or start with our full buyer's guide if you're still narrowing down where to look.

Data sources: AirROI Nosara market report (trailing twelve months, 2025-2026) and Airbtics Playa Guiones Sur report (February 2025-January 2026). Occupancy and rate figures are third-party market estimates, not guarantees of future performance. Always verify with property-level booking history before purchase.