As Otto strengthens from tropical storm to category 1 hurricane and continues to move towards Costa Rica the government has requested black Friday promotions to be moved to another date at least in the areas under red alert, particularly the duty free center of Golfito in the South Pacific, in order to prevent unnecessary emergency situations. The administration of the duty free has already confirmed they will remain closed on Thursday, November 24 and Friday, November 25 as a preventive measure, the discounts, promotions and sale specials will be moved to the first two weeks of December.

RPM productions, promoters of the Guns N’ Roses concert scheduled for this Saturday, November 26 at the Costa Rica National Stadium have confirmed they have no plans on suspending the concert at this time, so the concert will take place as planned. Don Stockwell, representative of RPM, stated that singer Axl Rose and the rest of the band will arrive in San Jose early Wednesday morning and also mentioned the company is taking measures to guarantee the safety of the workers, as well as the different structures and the stage that are being set up for this event. RPM hopes that the information given by the National Hurricane Center which predicts Otto will ward off by Friday is accurate and the concert will not be affected. “We are very concerned about our brothers (neighbors of the red alert areas), in the event that the hurricane creates a lot of damage we will be doing something to help the victims”, said Stockwell. 85% of the total 38,000 tickets to the Guns N’ Roses concert have already been sold.

The soccer games scheduled for this Wednesday and Thursday (Saprissa-Heredia and Santos-Alajuela) have been suspended. These games are part of the 2016 National Winter Tournament in Costa Rica; the first match of this tournament between Saprissa and Alajuela was supposed to take place this past Sunday but the game was cancelled after the sudden death of Saprissas’ former player Gabriel Badilla. Saprissa and Alajuela will now play their first game this season on Wednesday, December 7th