The Venezuelan government will appropriate over $156 million in 2005 for tour and travel advertisement in an effort to lure more foreign travelers and put its own destinations on the map, Venezuela’s Tourism Deputy Minister Dalila Montserrat said this week. Most plans for the upcoming year are focused on the opening of new travel destinations, like the Manaos-Margarita Axis, a combination that will benefit both Venezuela and Brazil.

Cuban President Fidel Castro broke some good economic news in the Parliament on Christmas Eve as he went through an assortment of trade outcomes in 2004 and laid out new business opportunities for the island nation next year. Investments in the nickel industry, the discovery of oil wells, credit lines and donations, heftier trade and financial ties with China and Venezuela, among other factors, helped the Cuban economy grow 5 percent in 2004.

The number of tourists who visited Mexico from January through October this year peaked 16.5 million, up 10.8 percent from the same period of time in 2003, while revenues have climbed 21.6 percent to nearly $8.8 billion. In the light of these figures, Mexico’s tourism officials are still in hope of reaching new milestones of $9.3 billion worth of profits and roughly 19 million travelers by the end of the year.

Costa Rica’s leisure industry is girding for heftier numbers next year despite a 5.6 percent slide in projected investment that will total $49.7 million, Tourism Minister Rodrigo Castro said this week. In 2003, the country snared $52.1 million in overall investment cash flow. Mr. Castro warned that unless investment growth speeds up in the near future, the gap between hotel room offer and demand will continue widening at a frenzied pace.

Regardless of a recent upturn as far as passengers and cargo volumes worldwide are concerned, the globe’s top airlines will lose more than $4.8 billion in 2004, the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) informed this week. IATA Director Giovanni Bisignani said that regardless of “a negative economic environment and heightened uncertainty about fluctuating oil prices, the international air traffic has been climbing steadily over the past ten months.”

Club Mediterranée, the French company, lost €44 million this year, yet that was €50 million shy of the €94 million it blew in 2003. Now the enterprise is apparently sneaking out of the red-number column for the first time in two years. The company’s sales went up 1.2 percent –deducting the money it spent on corporate overhaul- to €1.6 billion, though returns fared differently depending on the region of the world.