The MITM Latin America Meetings and Incentive Trade Market (MITM) took place for a third time in a row in Mexico (March 13 to 15 in Merida, Yucatan) despite the fact that the U.S. war against Iraq is making a tremendous dent in the leisure industry worldwide. More than a hundred purchasers from almost two dozen countries gathered for MITM 2003 lured by the incentive and congress market.

Just a general reminder: in two weeks (April 1-3) the hotel and tourism investment community will be gathering in beautiful Bermuda for the 7th annual Caribbean Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference (CHTIC).

Marketing companies from two dozen countries opened the Eighth International Fair of Food, Containers, Packing and Graphic Arts (ALIMEXPO) this week in Havana.

Cuba is giving great media hype to this event closely linked to the leisure industry in an effort to offer an assorted menu in which good taste and the preference of visitors coming from everywhere around the globe are the name of the game.

The Caribbean was prominently featured at one of the world’s leading travel exhibitions, the International Tourism Exchange ITB Berlin 2003 which took place in the German city of Berlin from March 7-11, 2003.

Twenty-eight (28) of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO)’s 32 member countries are among the 181 countries and territories participating in the event. As it has done every year since 1980, CTO will coordinate a Caribbean Village at the Berlin Exhibition Ground, site of the tourism trade fair.

Today’s society is well informed and mass media play an increasingly higher role than ever before with a decisive contribution of their own to the understanding that news reporting is a national priority, said Mexican Tourism Secretary Leticia Navarro in the closing ceremony of the First National Forum on Tourism and Mass Media held on Isla Mujeres.

The cream of the crop as far as information technology is concerned is putting on a great show this week at the Pabexpo Fairgrounds in Havana with 35 Cuban companies and other firms hailing from Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, China, Spain, Italy, France and Panama.

The tradeshow spreads knowledge about high-tech breakthroughs and brand-new products hitting the national market, including the latest software, computer items and related products linked to information, telecommunications, automation and the electronic industry.