Mexican authorities and entrepreneurs will fork over $353 million from 2003 to 2025 to foster tourist development in Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero in virtue of an agreement between the Tourism Department and local officials in both Acapulco and Guerrero aimed at giving the Acapulco Metropolitan Area Tourism Plan a big leg up.

Nicaragua’s leisure industry has been churning out $110 million since 2000 and has doubtlessly turned out to be the lifesaver of a national economy that has undergone a dramatic fall in the price of its crops, said MP Tomas Borge, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Tourism Affairs.

The congressman opened Monday an event hat seeks to foster tourism, a sector that employs 136,000 people and accounts for around $80 million worth of ticket sales for airlines.

TUI, the world’s biggest tour operator, will cut down on costs this year for an additional 150 million euros ($159 million) and rub out 100 jobs from its headquarters’ payroll in an effort to raise both profitability and competitiveness.

By 2004, the company expects to sock away 100 million euros ($106 million) worth of savings, TUI president Michael Frenzel said.

The Germany-based tour operator will slice costs for a grand total of 260 million euros ($276 million) after announcing earlier this year projected cutbacks of up to 111 million euros ($118 million).

Varadero Beach, one of Cuba’s premiere tourist circuits, made it big in the first two months of the ongoing year with a walloping $107.6 million worth of revenues, the largest lump sum of its history, an official sources said.

This figure stands for a 5 percent increase compared to the same period of time the year before, Lester Oliva, a delegate from the Ministry of Tourism to that coveted destination, told weekly newspaper Options.

U.S. air companies –downtrodden by the impact of terrorism and a swaying economy- forecast more layoffs and massive losses in case of a war against Iraq and unless the federal government hands out more bailout packages.

The worsening crisis in aviation could also make a similar dent in the leisure industry, according to a report released by the Air Transportation Association (ATA), an entity that clusters all major U.S. airlines.

Despite being half a world apart, the Dominican Republic fears a U.S. attack against Iraq could unleash serious difficulties amid a complex social and economic situation the island nation is going through.

In Dominican president Hipolito Mejias’ opinion, “a war against Iraq is a fact and the country must brace itself to cushion its effects, especially in such basic sectors for the economy as tourism and free trade zones.”