With an eye aimed squarely at the teenage market (ages 14 to 17), Club Med has opened The Ramp at the Club Med Punta Cana, Dominican Republic and will also debut it at the chain´s family properties in Ixtapa, Mexico, and Sandpiper, Florida, by the end of the year. The Ramp, a collaboration between the Coca-Cola Co. and Rockwell Group designers, is a two-story, open-air lounge that serves as a place for teens to hang out, skateboard, rollerblade and escape parental supervision.

Majorca-based chains Barceló Hotels & Resorts and RIU Hotels & Resorts have beefed up their presence in the Caribbean, a travel destination –they say- that seems to go on for forever more. On the one hand, the all-inclusive, five-star Barceló Marina Palace, recently opened in Cuba´s Varadero as part of a joint marketing strategy between Barceló Hotels and the Gaviota Group S.A., is an excellent lodging designed to enrich the world of those who come to stay here.

Spanish company NH Hotels has started out the internationalization of its Fast Good restaurant chain with the grand opening in Santiago de Chile of its first establishment outside Spain, the company´s front office informed. Fast Good has landed on Latin America with the help of ValueBiz Group, a investment firm. Fast Good chain is an innovating cuisine concept that offers top-quality fast food that is the result of an in-depth study of the hotel and catering trade carried out by Ferran Adria and NH Hotels aimed at offering an alternative proposal between normal fast food and the menus of quality restaurants.

RIU Hotels, the Spanish company, will open a couple of five-star, all-inclusive lodging facilities in the first half of 2006. The new additions are the RIU Palace Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and Mexico´s RIU Palace Mayan Riviera. The two establishment underscore the maturity of the Palace trademark, created by architect Luis Andino in 1989 with the grand opening of the Palace Maspalomas Hotel in Grand Canary Island, Spain.

Sandals Hotels will invest 49 US$49 million in expanding its 193-room property in Antigua with another 150 rooms. Tourism minister Harold Lovell said the project would help reposition Antigua as an up-market destination. The Mediterranean Village, as the expansion will be called, will be located on six acres adjacent to the existing Sandals resort on Dickenson Bay. Construction will begin in April with completion projected for September 2006.

The Poma Hotel Group is planning to pony up $25 million to enhance the Real Intercontinental Costa Rica Hotel, in the west side of San Jose, the Central American nation´s capital. The number of rooms at the five-star facility will now jump from 261 to 361, plus additional services, a new fitness center, a gym and more restaurants.