Excel Holidays have announced a series of bargain prices on holidays to the Caribbean in the New Year. The newly launched holiday program includes travel to the islands of Antigua, Barbados, Grenada, St Kitts and Tobago. Part of the growing XL.com group, all these specially priced holidays can be booked online and combine direct flights out of London Gatwick and Manchester with a range of top class beachfront accommodations, choice of meal plans and room upgrades.

World tourism has undergone significant changes over the past few years. While these are in large part attributable to external factors –such as the economic and political situation, environmental issues, terrorist attacks and safety and health scares- many of them in fact stem from the changing consumer, as a result of demographic shifts and lifestyle changes. “One of the most critical developments, for example,” to quote Rob Franklin, Executive Director of the European Travel Commission (ETC), “is the aging of the population in key source markets, which has already had - and will continue to have - a major impact on travel and tourism demand.”

Caribbean wholesaler Cheapcaribbean.com launched an upscale travel product line, Ultra-Luxury for Less, offering all of the luxury without the added cost associated with other upscale product lines. Founded in December 2000, Cheapcaribbean.com has attracted shoppers to its site from the beginning even when it was virtually unknown because the word "cheap" was like gold when it came to Web searches.

Anthony Stuart, formerly the deputy director for the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, has been named executive director of the Bahama Out Islands Promotion Board. Mr. Stuart will be joined at the board by Margie Schneider, who will assume the newly created position of director of strategic planning and marketing.

Dominican Tourism minister Felix Jimenez stated last week that the Russian and Ukrainian outbound markets have doubled over the past twelve months. By August 2006, over 24,000 tourists from Eastern Europe have already visited the Caribbean country. Mr. Jimenez met with tourism representatives from Russia and from important tour operators and airlines during a visit he paid to Russia in an effort to lure that fledgling outbound market.

Holland America Line (HAL) rebuffed charges contained in a lawsuit filed last week that the line defrauded passengers traveling on Alaska cruises through deceptive practices. The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Seattle, claims that although HAL levied what it claimed were government-imposed fines on its passengers for violating the Passenger Vessel Services Act, the line was not fined by the U.S. government.