Mexican hotels will rake in revenues in the neighborhood of 10 billion pesos (some $800 million) during the Holy Week season, a time of year when Mexicans pack all sun-and-sand destinations around the country, the hoteliers’ guild reported.

“The local hotel sector will make some 10 billion pesos worth of revenues during this oncoming Holy Week season,” pointed out Miguel Torruco, president of the Hotel and Motel Association of Mexico (AMHM is the acronym in Spanish).

Over the past five years, Panama has added 39 new hotels to its stock of accommodations, a figure that is keeping local tourism authorities red hot about the prospect of welcoming nearly a million foreign travelers in 2004.

Cuba-based tourist group Cubanacan has made it big in the eastern travel destination of Holguin with a whopping 36 percent increase in revenues and 54 percent more gains in the first quarter of the ongoing year compared to the same span of time in 2003, by far the best year ever for the island nation´s third-largest tourist circuit.

Stays in that destination were up more than 18,000 while hotel occupancy hovered around 90 percent. In Holguin, Cubanacan relies on over 1,200 accommodations, most of them clustered in Guardalavaca, its premier spot, with 1,180 rooms in all.

The leisure industry will surely be a major source of jobs for Brazilians, said Tourism Minister Walfrido dos Mares, whose department is estimating growth numbers in the neighborhood of 7 to 8 percent and announcing the creation of 180,000 to 220,000 new jobs this year alone.

LanChile has just unveiled its new corporate image that gathers all companies under the name Latin American Network (LAN) with simultaneous presentations in all of its Latin American destinations.

Now the air carrier has merged its own corporate image with affiliates in Chile, Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic in an effort to make it work in a more comprehensive way while keeping its independence in one piece.

Panama ought to cope with more economic reforms, skyrocketing unemployment and bulkier shortfalls regardless of good outcomes in such fields as transportation, tourism and the building industry, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) disclosed in a recent report.

On May 2002, Panamanian authorities passed a fiscal responsibility legislation with a view to slash public debt by half of the nation´s gross domestic product (GDP). So far, the country has managed to make a gradual dent in its once heavy deficit.