Cuba’s tourist sector –the island nation’s top source of hard currency income- got off scot-free of hurricane Ivan’s fierce gusting winds and it’s now going back to business after remaining virtually stalled for a couple of days, Cuban Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero said this weekend. “There’re no considerable damages in tourism, only a few of minor proportions and most of them reported in a few facilities along the southern shore. But they’re nothing we can’t have fixed in the short run,” Mr. Marrero was quoted as saying in a press conference. Hurricane Ivan, ranked as a category five storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, spun northbound Monday night past the tobacco-growing province of Pinar del Rio, on the westernmost tip of Cuba.

Central American governments are looking to tourism as a lifeline for their feeble economies and bending over backward to paint a brighter picture of their countries in an effort to make potential visitors put behind the image of the war-riddled region that it used to be in the past. Tourism ministers and officials met over the weekend in Costa Rica for the First Central American Tourism Congress that gathered more than 200 experts.

Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic were picked among the most affordable travel destinations in the Americas, according to the Competitiveness Monitor of the World Travel & Tourism Council. The information about some 200 countries shows how the world travel and tourism industry fares in sought-after regions, as well as their impact on international competitiveness in each and every destination.

Officials from the World Tourism Organization (WTO) said this week that the leisure industry fared well during the first half of the ongoing year and has begun to snap back from the aftermath of the terrorist attacks occurred in many countries, especially in the U.S. and Spain. According to the WTO, South and Central America, as well as the Caribbean Basin, held on to the growing numbers they had posted the year before, chiefly driven by the competitive edge provided by a weakened greenback and due to their being nearby travel destinations for America, one of the world´s biggest sending markets.

After three years of cutbacks and losses, U.S. airlines are gearing up to capture the profits they expect from their fastest-growing international market: Latin America. Healthier economies in the USA and Latin America, and improved political and monetary stability in Latin America, are rekindling the aggressive growth in flying capacity that preceded the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to the USA Today. Capacity in the U.S.-Latin American market – which includes Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean – has been down about 8% since 2000. Airline planners say there´s huge growth potential in Latin America, a 400 million-person market that is still in its economic infancy. Latin America trails only the mature U.S.-Europe market in passengers on U.S. carriers. "It´s where the action is," says Bob Booth, chairman of AvMan, a Miami consulting firm that specializes in the Latin American aviation market. Getting in on that action:

Latin American capitals, from the southernmost cone to the Caribbean, are increasingly becoming attraction centers for thousands of sunbathers hailing from the U.S. and Europe. This summer, in addition to beach travels to the Caribbean, other destinations like Rio de Janeiro, Costa Rica´s San Jose and Colombia´s Cartagena de Indias are welcoming more and more travelers.