The Marriott and Sheraton Hotels in Puerto Vallarta have just grabbed the "H" Award in recognition to its quality in the hygienic management of food and beverages served to tourists there. The "H" Award Program is a strategic element of Mexico´s Tourism Department that helps paint a better picture of the Aztec nation and fosters the promotion of local travel and tourism abroad.

As the Spanish invasion continues inching forward in Jamaica, there´s increasing buzz that RIU Hotels & Resorts will open its third all-inclusive lodging in Jamaica come November, pushing the tally in the region to two dozen establishments. The 846-room Club Hotel RIU Ocho Rios will be perched on Jamaica´s north coast and will include six restaurants, seven bars, two pools, a sauna, and a kids´ club.

Hilton Hotels Corp. will probably sell eleven properties by the end of this year, and will likely use the proceeds to buy back shares, a Deutsche Bank analyst said earlier this week. Hilton is expected to announce the sale of its Palmer House property in Chicago and 10 other owned hotels this year, in deals that could fetch the company between $500 million to $800 million. The hotel chains has no plans so far to put properties in Latin America or the Caribbean o the market.

Orient-Express Hotels Ltd., investor in 49 deluxe hotel, restaurant, tourist train and river cruise properties in 25 countries, today announced its results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2005. The net loss for the period was $1.6 million (loss of $0.04 per common share) on revenue of $82.2 million, compared with a net loss of $4.6 million ($0.13 per common share) on revenue of $66.1 million in the prior year period. The earnings improvement was 65 percent, the earnings per common share improvement was 70% and the revenue improvement was 25 percent.

During a recent working session with French tour operators, Carmen Casals, chief of Cuba´s Tourism Ministry Office in France, explained the island nation´s hotel industry in grew at an unprecedented 9 percent index between 1990 and 2004. Cuba´s travel industry will count on four new hotels by the end of 2005, ramping up the island nation´s stock of accommodations to a grand total of 44,000 rooms across the country.

Spanish hotel chain Sol Meliá welcomed 227,796 guests in the first three months of the ongoing year, up a walloping 31.6 percent from the first quarter of 2004. During a presentation the Majorca-based company made at Cuba´s International Tourism Fair, top execs informed its hotels on the island nation totaled $100 million in the course of 2004 at an average price tag of $77.38 per room.