American Airlines was flying high in 2001. Its parent company had averaged $1 billion in annual profit for four years, it had just scooped up iconic TWA to become the world´s largest airline, and its stock price was at an all-time high. Then on September 11, 2001, the unimaginable happened, when two of American´s planes were seized by terrorists and crashed, one into the World Trade Center and the other into the Pentagon. The attacks plunged the airline industry into a long and deep slump.

As destinations reach to a more mature stage in the tourism life cycle, more sophisticated niche tourism products are developed by planners aiming to retain market share. Genealogy Tourism, also known as “ancestry” and “roots” tourism is one such product, which falls under the umbrella of culture and heritage tourism, and is travel aimed at visiting birthplaces of one´s ancestors and getting acquainted with distant relatives. It is generally considered as a viable option for tourism product diversification.

Capacity on low-cost airlines has more than doubled in just four years, according to the latest figures released from OAG. This month (September 2006), budget airlines plan to operate more than 46 million seats on over 323,000 flights, compared with 22 million seats on 169,000 flights in September 2002. The volume of low-cost flights worldwide is 14 percent higher than a year ago, and offers 16 percent more capacity.

First, the good news: the number of overnight visits made by Americans to Canada jumped by 2.5 percent to 3.5 million in the second quarter of this year. Now the bad news: that is only a slight improvement over the first quarter figure of 3.4 million visits –the lowest in eight years. The seasonally adjusted figures were contained in Statistics Canada´s report on the country´s international travel account released this week.

International travelers to the U.S increased by 6.7 percent in 2005, according to research from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, excluding travelers from Canada and Mexico. During 2004 and 2005 international travelers to the U.S. increased by 20.3 percent, the largest two-year increase since 1996, but below 2000 and 2001 levels, the firm found.

For the global tourism industry the critical point of last month´s alleged abortive airline bomb plot was that a terrorist atrocity did not occur and due to the vigilance of police and security services in the UK, Pakistan, Italy and other countries the alleged plot was foiled.