Spain-based Barceló Hotels & Resorts and Portuguese carrier Air Luxor signed an important agreement Wednesday at the 2004 FITUR. The signing ceremony took place at the Spanish hotel chain’s stand and was presided over by Jose Nery of Air Luxor and Jose Brichs, Head of Corporate Marketing for Barceló Hotels & Resorts.

The Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) has presented its comments on the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery Report (CRNM) on "Tourism Services Negotiations: Implications for Cariforum." This official position has now been taken forward to Caribbean negotiators on behalf of CHA, representing the views of the Caribbean tourism private sector.

Nicaragua’s leisure industry churned out $150 million in 2003 thanks to the coming of half a million travelers for a walloping $34 million spike from 2002, thus underlining its role as the country’s top source of hard-currency revenues, the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR) reported.

The institution’s stats reveal the local travel industry has way outnumbered the six-digit figures made by such commodities as coffee, mutton, lobster, raw gold and peanuts from the list of the nation’s top twenty exportable items.

El Salvador grabbed $372.3 million worth of tourism revenues in 2003, up 8.8 percent from 2002, the Salvadoran Tourism Corporation (CORSATUR) informed.

In a report released Monday, the institution points to a $58.4 million hike compared to the same period of time the year before.

This cash flow has propelled the local leisure industry as the chart topper of the country’s major hard-currency makers, way above traditional crops like coffee, sugar and shrimps.

Brussels’s trade courthouse ruled Monday that Belgium’s charter flight company Sobelair had definitely gone bankrupt. The air carrier had been struggling for months to stay afloat, judicial sources pointed out.

The Belgian airline was an affiliate of Sabena, a company that met a similar fate in late 2001. After filing for bankruptcy, Sobelair cancelled its four daily flights to Mexico’s Cancun, Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, plus Alicante and Las Palmas in Spain, sources close to the front office indicated.

Argentine officials, businesspeople and hoteliers are wallowing in the tourist boom sweeping Argentina and following a record-high 1.2 million foreign visitors in 2003, most of them hailing from Brazil, Chile, the United States and Spain.