JW Marriott Costa Elena Is Open: What the New All-Inclusive in Northern Guanacaste Is Like and How to Get There from Liberia Airport

Every year or two a hotel opens in Guanacaste that changes where people ask us to drive them. In 2025 it was Nekajui on Peninsula Papagayo. This year it is the JW Marriott Costa Elena, which took its first guests on 10 September 2026 on Playa El Jobo, up in La Cruz, about as far north as you can go in Costa Rica before you reach Nicaragua. Marriott made the opening official on 6 October, and the bookings for the drive from Liberia Airport started arriving the same week. This is what the resort is, what changed from the hotel that stood there before, and what the trip from LIR is really like.

Quick facts

Opened	10 September 2026 (first guests); announced by Marriott on 6 October 2026
What it is	The first all-inclusive JW Marriott in the world
Where	Playa El Jobo, La Cruz, northern Guanacaste, inside the Costa Elena development
Rooms	415 rooms and suites, including the 45-room Griffin Club
Dining	15 restaurants and bars
Pools	17, covering about 44,000 sq ft (4,090 m²), with an oceanfront infinity pool
Formerly	Dreams Las Mareas, rebuilt in a $60 million transformation
Distance from LIR	75 km (47 mi), paved the whole way
Drive time	1 h 20 – 1 h 40
Private transfer, 1–5 passengers	$160 per vehicle, fixed
Private transfer, 6–9 passengers	$180 per vehicle
Private transfer, 10–12 passengers	$240 per vehicle

The hotel that was there before

If you have been to northern Guanacaste, you know the site. Dreams Las Mareas opened on Playa El Jobo in 2014 and for a decade it was the all-inclusive at the top of the map, the one guests booked for a quiet week far from Tamarindo. It changed owners in 2025 and closed for the rebuild. The operator, Mullen Hospitality Management, describes the result as a $60 million transformation rather than a renovation, and from what our drivers have seen on the first runs, that is fair: the arrival, the pool area and the restaurants are new, not refreshed.

The name matters for one practical reason. The route in our booking system that used to say Dreams Las Mareas now says JW Marriott Costa Elena, with the same fares, and if your hotel confirmation or an old itinerary still shows the Dreams name, it is the same place.

What opened on 10 September

The JW Marriott Costa Elena is a milestone for the brand: JW Marriott has never run an all-inclusive resort before, anywhere, and it chose this beach for the first one. The numbers it opened with are large for Guanacaste.

Rooms. There are 415 rooms and suites, designed to feel like villas, every one with a private terrace or balcony. Some ground-floor rooms open onto semi-private swim-out pools. Junior Suites start at about 527 sq ft and come with a hot tub on the terrace. The Griffin Club is a 45-room section within the resort with its own lounge, its own pool, a private stretch of beach, butler service, personal check-in and priority reservations at the restaurants and pool cabanas.

Food. Fifteen restaurants and bars, which is more than any other resort in the province. The ones Marriott has named: Leal, a Guanacaste-inspired restaurant with coffee-roasting experiences and a seven-course tasting menu; Casado, a wood-fired coastal grill; Puerto Limón, with Afro-Caribbean cooking from the other coast; and LaGloria, a root beer stand. There are also Italian, Mexican and Japanese kitchens, and a JW Garden that grows herbs, edible flowers, fruit and vegetables for the restaurants and bars. Once a week the resort hosts a night market with artisans, food, music and dance from the area.

Pools. Seventeen of them, including an oceanfront infinity pool, spread over roughly 44,000 sq ft. Marriott calls it the largest resort pool complex in Costa Rica. There are separate family and Griffin Club areas, a children's pool and a waterslide.

Spa and wellness. Spa by JW occupies close to 16,000 sq ft with a fitness centre and one of the largest hydrotherapy pools in the country. It also has the brand's first Mindfulness House, with treatments that range from hydrotherapy and sound healing to Reiki and cacao ceremonies.

Families and activities. The Family by JW Club runs nature walks, children's yoga, creative workshops, storytelling and movie nights. Off the beach there is kayaking, fishing, scuba diving, sunset hikes and private yacht charters, all organised from the resort.

Where Playa El Jobo actually is

This is the part most hotel websites skip. The resort sits on Playa El Jobo, a wide, golden-sand beach inside Bahía Salinas, the big bay on the Pacific side of the Nicaraguan border. It belongs to Costa Elena, a private development of about 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of dry forest and coastline, and the hotel is the only one on its beach.

There is no town. La Cruz, 20 minutes up the hill, is a small municipal centre with a supermarket, a few sodas and the best viewpoint in northern Guanacaste, high above the bay. The border crossing at Peñas Blancas is about 20 minutes further on. Playas del Coco, the nearest beach town with restaurants and bars, is roughly an hour away. Guests who choose the JW Marriott Costa Elena choose it for that: a full all-inclusive with the whole bay to itself.

The bay has its own weather. From December to April the afternoon wind in Bahía Salinas is strong enough that the kitesurfing schools of the country are based here, on the beaches just east of the resort. Mornings are calm. Santa Rosa National Park, with the dry-forest trails and the historic Casona, is half an hour back down the highway, and Rincón de la Vieja is a day trip of about an hour and a half each way.

The drive from Liberia Airport

Your driver waits at the arrivals exit holding a sign with your name. We track the flight, so an early or late landing changes nothing, and you leave as soon as you have your bags.

From the airport the van joins the Pan-American Highway (Route 1) heading north. The first 40 minutes are flat and fast through the dry forest, past the entrance to Santa Rosa National Park. The road then climbs to La Cruz, where the view opens over the whole of Bahía Salinas; it is worth asking the driver for a two-minute photo stop at the viewpoint. From there the coastal road descends to the bay and runs along it, paved, to the Costa Elena entrance and the resort gate. Door to door it takes 1 hour 20 minutes to 1 hour 40 minutes depending on traffic at the Liberia junctions, and the whole route is paved: no 4x4, no gravel, and no problem after dark.

Costa Elena is a private development with a guard post at its entrance. As with Peninsula Papagayo and Hacienda Pinilla, we send the driver's details to the resort when a hotel asks for them, so the vehicle is expected when you arrive.

Live prices and booking are on the LIR to JW Marriott Costa Elena route page. The return, JW Marriott Costa Elena to LIR, is the same fare.

Ways to get there from LIR

Option	Time to the hotel	Cost	Worth knowing
Private transfer	1 h 20 – 1 h 40, direct	$160 fixed for 1–5 passengers	Flight tracked, child seats included, one grocery stop
Hotel car service	Same drive	Premium rate through the concierge	Usually the most expensive option
Rental car	Same drive plus pickup paperwork	$40–90 a day plus mandatory insurance and a deposit	Only pays off if you leave the resort every day; there is little to drive to
Shared shuttle	Not offered to La Cruz on a fixed schedule	—	Shared vans serve Coco, Tamarindo and Flamingo, not Bahía Salinas
Airport taxi	Same drive	$130–170, negotiated on the spot	No flight tracking, cash only, no child seats

For two people the private transfer costs about what a taxi would, with the price fixed before you land. For a family of five it is $32 a head for a 75 km ride, which is why the all-inclusive guests nearly all book it.

Day trips from the resort

Destination	Time from the JW Marriott Costa Elena	Why go
Playa Rajada and the Bahía Salinas beaches	10–15 min	Calm snorkelling coves in the morning, kitesurfing wind in the afternoon
La Cruz viewpoint and town	20 min	The panorama over the bay, a supermarket and local sodas
Santa Rosa National Park	30 min	Dry-forest trails, the Casona, and Playa Naranjo with Witch's Rock offshore
Rincón de la Vieja	1 h 30	Hot springs, mud pools and volcano hikes; the classic full-day trip
Playas del Coco and the Papagayo gulf	1 h	The nearest beach town, plus boat trips on the gulf

All of these are quoted as private round trips with the driver waiting, which is usually cheaper than the concierge rate for the same car.

A few things our drivers would tell you

• The resort is the only hotel on its beach and the nearest shop is 20 minutes away, so if you want anything that is not on the all-inclusive, stop at the supermarket in Liberia or La Cruz on the way in. The stop costs nothing.
• The LIR arrivals hall is busiest between noon and 4 p.m., when the US flights land together. Allow up to an hour for immigration before you meet the driver; we track the flight and adjust.
• For the departure, book the pickup 4.5 hours before an international flight: 1.5 hours of driving plus the 3 hours the airport asks for in high season.
• Keep passports in your hand luggage. The border is close and the police checkpoints on Route 1 occasionally ask for identification.
• Arriving at night is fine. The highway and the coastal road are paved and the resort gate is staffed around the clock; there is no night surcharge on the transfer.

Booking

The Liberia Airport to JW Marriott Costa Elena private transfer can be booked online in a couple of minutes at a fixed price per vehicle, with the flight tracked and child seats included. If you want to compare the resort with the rest of the coast first, our guide to the best hotels in Guanacaste by zone covers all of them, and for anything else, write to us on WhatsApp and one of the drivers will answer.