Autentica Cuba Caravan, an initiative of Cuba's Tourism Ministry (MINTUR) to expose its recreation industry products, will tour several cities of Spain and Portugal from Sept. 26th, starting in Bilbao, north of the Basque Country.

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) recognizes September 27 as World Tourism Day, a day dedicated to raising the awareness of the importance of tourism to the global community and its social, cultural, political and economic value.

The Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) has partnered with the Ministry of Tourism (MOT) on a policy and strategy framework for community-based tourism projects in Jamaica. The initiative should significantly boost community tourism, using a collective approach in designing a program to improve and standardize this aspect of the industry.

Jamaica's uptick in cruise ship visitors has kept the country's tourist arrivals afloat, with a 13.6 percent increase in the first eight months of the year, Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has revealed.

Costa Rica receives the majority of its tourist arrivals from the Americas, with the top three source markets for visitors to the country being the US, Nicaragua and Canada. Tourism arrivals, after increasing from 1.72 million in 2006 to 2.15 million in 2008, dipped to 1.93 million in 2009. Numbers picked up in 2010, and are forecast to reach 2.32 million in 2011.

Foreign investors will join Russian political and commercial elite in the southern seaside resort town of Sochi at a high-profile government economic conference to sign the first large-scale international agreements toward development of a sustainable tourism industry in the North Caucasus, an unspoiled alpine region.