A ballpark figure of 400 events –comprising congress, celebrations and meetings- will take place in Cuba during the course of 2003, as published in the Guidebook of Congress and Incentive Travel Facilities of the island nation’s Convention Desk.

Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Quito will hold the First International Forum on Ecological Tourism from Nov. 19 to 21, as proposed by the 14th Plenary Meeting of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC International)The event seeks to pave the way toward a more dynamic kind of relationship between ecology and tourism within a framework of sustainable development and complementation, the ministry informed in a news release.

The environmental impact of architecture and engineering works will be the main course at the 2nd International Symposium on Architecture and Engineering for the Environment (ARINSEMA), scheduled to take place here from Nov. 18 to 20.Experts from Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica and El Salvador have confirmed their attendance to the working sessions to be held in the headquarters of Cuba’s Union of Architects and Building Engineers (UNAICC), the event’s organizer.

Heads of state from 21 Latin American countries, plus Spain and Portugal, agreed in the recently concluded Summit of Bavaro held in the Dominican Republic to give tourist development a powerful leg up, the regional leaders underscored in the event’s final declaration.

Two member nations of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) were among the 17 new countries that exhibited at World Travel Market (WTM) in London: Aruba and St. Maarten were among those that contributed to making this year’s WTM the largest ever in its 23-year history.The four day event, one of the premier global exhibitions for the travel industry, brought together around 5,000 of the world’s leading travel and tourism companies from over 183 countries.

Before rolling down the curtains, the 20th edition of Havana’s International Fair awarded the best products, stands and attending countries. Two days before the official closing ceremony, over $70 million in commercial contracts ($62.1 million) and foreign investment ($8 million) had already been signed.