As part of a $5 billion overhaul that kicked off earlier this week in an effort to cut costs, wages and benefits to workers, Delta Airlines announced its intention to lay off between 6,000 and 7,000 employees within the next eighteen months. The U.S. company’s President and CEO, Gerald Grinstein, explained the air carrier is steadily implementing a cost-cutting plan that will hack off approximately $2.3 billion by the end of 2004.

A senior official of the Jamaica shipping industry says the cruise ship sector continues to be a vibrant and growing contributor to the island´s economy, earning between US$80 million to US$100 million annually. Vice President of Cruise Shipping and Marina Operations at the Port Authority of Jamaica, William Tatham, is also predicting that the sector will grow by 10 per cent growth over the next decade.

Mexico and Singapore cut a deal to pour $60 million worth of investment into the development of Acapulco´s travel industry, in the state of Guerrero. The pact was inked by Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts and the Mexican Development Group. According to a press release issued by Mexico´s Tourism Department, the accord will pave the way for the construction of the first Banyan Tree resort in Acapulco´s Punta Diamante, the most exclusive area of this destination of the Mexican Pacific.

The Americas Soccer Cup that came to a close Saturday in Peru brought in as many as 20,000 foreign tourists who shelled out $25 million in the country, Arturo Woodman, president of the Cup´s Organizing Committee, said this week. Ticket sales amounted to $4.7 million in just 17 days as 430,000 soccer fans watched the games in seven Peruvian cities.

A grand total of 583,937 foreign tourists arrived in Costa Rican airports during the first half of the year, up 28 percent from the first six months of 2003. Would this increment continue at a such a white-heat pace, tourism authorities in the country are expecting to put up numbers in the double digits by the end of the ongoing year and rake in some $1.4 billion worth of revenues, nearly $200 million more than in 2003.

International tourism panned out to be Brazil’s third-largest source of income money during the first half of the ongoing year with $1.6 billion worth of revenues, up 46.3 percent from 2003. The Central Bank reported that the local travel industry only trailed behind soybeans and iron ore as the South American nation’s biggest source of hard-currency money.