These beach towns are historic vacation rental markets and rely heavily tourism.

We live in a vacation city in the mountains of NC, robust tourism, and around 4 million visitors annually.  

Overall I am thinking that tourism traffic is still in a recovery phase but will eventually pick up (Take a look at this article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2018/04/03/news/puerto-rico-tourism/index.html ).

There are still homes here that would meet your critiera (3 bed / 1.5 bath home with a $200K budget) depending on the neighborhood you select...though most will need some repairs or updates.SA has a relatively strong/stable renter pool thanks to solid economic growth, a large military footprint, and steady tourism.  

My father owned tourism based businesses, and liquidated a few years ago, his contacts got him onto a group who buy property management rights, they offered him a buy in to the next property, a resort on the Gold Coast (one of the most popular tourist destinations in Australia), this investment (which was thoroughly looked over by his accountant and lawyer) over the past 3 years has been netting him on average 18% per year, passively.

There is probably a niche market there (and maybe a lucrative one for the right person and situation) but I quit doing seasonals in my area early in my landlording career.In my area, 3-4 month rentals are in demand in some time frames during the year (summer tourism, legislative session e.g.), but having done a few short term rentals early on, it just did not pencil out well for me. 

Costa Rica does make a good portion of their income from tourism so there is some effect going on.

For that reason alone I wouldn’t touch anything that is not in a big city (Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Bilbao), where I expect people to still relocate looking for better jobs, or in a nice area of the coastline, where you can count on either good tourism or well-off retirees.However, I believe there are opportunities in some neighborhoods and niches.

Is it in an area with vacationer appeal and steady tourism - you mentioned a beach was close by.  

From what i understand prices are down, but I couldn't get a handle on whether tourism was down.