The UNWTO launched a new project leading to at least 20 percent overall energy savings and increasing renewable energy use by 10 percent in hotels. It targets particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which represent the vast majority of hotel rooms in the accommodation sector and who can benefit from best practice trends and technology advances.

Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is insisting that despite the global financial crisis, the island’s tourism industry remains buoyant. In fact, he says the upcoming winter season is projected to a record high five-percent increase over the previous year.

Australia’s dangerously hot and dry Simpson Desert will be closed for the first time during the southern hemisphere’s summer to prevent tourists dying in the outback.

A nudist resort wants to bring back swingers and sex parties in a bid to boost sagging tourism figures. The White Cockatoo resort in Mossman, near Port Douglas, north Queensland, is promoting an adults-only “anything goes” month of hedonism for March next year. Owner of the White Cockatoo Tony Fox said it was time to lift a self-imposed swinger ban.

A new survey of more than 900 American Express travel agents suggests that travelers this holiday season are savvier than ever before, fulfilling their vacation plans in the midst of the current economic downturn by finding smart ways to save.

St. Kitts and Nevis tourism minister, Rickey Skerritt, has said that increasing competition from new and emerging markets should serve as a wake-up call for the Caribbean. Speaking to the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) at the World Travel Market (WTM) trade show that ended in London last week, Mr. Skerritt warned that there was no room for complacency, as travelers were now a lot more discerning than in the past about where they take a holiday.