“Argentina and the Moon”, organized by the Gattoni Company, walked off with the award to the Best Incentive Tourism Program at the 2004 EIBTM during a ceremony held at the Catalonian Conference Palace in Spain´s Barcelona. The top award is a recognition to efficient planning and creativeness of business meetings and events that embraces a 14-category series of prizes.

With a view to come together in a professional forum to discuss topics and exchange experiences on the factors that play a major role in the training of human resources for the travel industry, Mexico’s Caribbean destination of Playa del Carmen was home this week to the Ninth National Meeting on Tourism Education. The event featured a massive turnout of principals and professors from several educational centers that teach tourism training at higher, high and elementary levels, as well as federal public officials, state and municipal authorities with a say in tourism training and education, and members of corporate Mexico.

Residents of Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, literally swarmed over the 35,000 square yards of exposition space set up for the Ninth International Tourism Fair (FIT), one of Latin America’s major travel markets. For this year’s event, La Rural de Palermo in Buenos Aires gathered more than 1,500 exhibitors from 31 countries. Organizers of the world’s sixth largest travel tradeshow estimate a record-breaking 61,000 people traipsed past the turnstiles this time around, a figure way above the 2003 turnout.

With an entourage of representatives from different travel companies and institutions, Cuba took part in the Shanghai 2004 International Tourism Fair that came to a close last week. The Cuban delegation, that brought along a slogan reading "Cuba: A Multi-Destination In Itself," was headed by the island nation´s Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz.

This year the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau has confirmed a total of 554 overall group bookings for its fiscal year ending June 30, 2004. Securing 231,400 in room night bookings, thus representing a 4.4 percent increase in overall room nights over the prior year’s figures. This overall production represents a potential economic impact of approximately U.S. $81MM to the Island’s economy. Part of this production was induced by a major boost in the sports marketing and sales efforts for which the Bureau produced 16,593 room night bookings. The sports market production represents an economic impact of approximately U.S. $5.8 million.

The Costa Rican Tourism Institute will hold a fair on community rural tourism in early December with a view to foster the advance of that particular activity as a model of sustainable development in the country and across Central America. The fair will take place from December 3 to 5 on the premises of the National Biodiversity Institute as an alternative for tourists willing to see the country´s rural areas, learn about the traditions and customs of its residents, and share with members of local communities.