World Tourism Shifts Back into High Gear

Officials from the World Tourism Organization (WTO) said this week that the leisure industry fared well during the first half of the ongoing year and has begun to snap back from the aftermath of the terrorist attacks occurred in many countries, especially in the U.S. and Spain.

According to the WTO, South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean Basin, held on to the growing numbers they had posted the year before, chiefly driven by the competitive edge provided by a weakened greenback and due to their being nearby travel destinations for America, one of the world´s biggest sending markets.

All stats were compiled on the information furnished by over 230 experts from a hundred countries after taking the poll that the WTO´s World Tourism Barometer conducts on a regular basis.

WTO Secretary-general Francesco Frangialli believes international travel will increase five percent in 2004 following a three-year drought all around the globe.

"Now the market is more volatile than ever before," Mr. Frangialli commented. "However, there´s a new growing period looming in the horizon after tourists beat a retreat to their own backyards in recent years."

In Mr. Frangialli´s opinion, the travel industry has come out stronger of the crisis and officials have convinced themselves of how important communication actually is when the going gets tough, especially in such cases as the chicken flu epidemic and the SARS outbreak.