The UK´s meetings industry has named Discovery –VisitBritain´s biggest business tourism event- the Best Live Event of the year. The award was presented at the Meetings Industry Marketing Awards 2005 held on October 4 to mark the start of National Meetings Week. With the next Discovery already planned for October 22 and 23 at the Marriott York, Jeremy Brinkworth, head of business tourism at VisitBritain, said destinations around the world compete to host the meetings, incentive trips, conferences and exhibitions of major global associations and organizations.

St Lucia wants to join a Venezuelan pact promising oil to Caribbean countries under preferential terms but needs to create a state agency to buy the fuel first, Prime Minister Kenny Anthony said. St Lucia is one of three Caribbean countries that have not signed the PetroCaribe plan, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez´s initiative to help Caribbean countries withstand the shock of record-high oil prices. Trinidad and Barbados also have not joined.

When there´s still a couple of months to go before the coming of 2006, two more slayings have put small island nation of St. Lucia on track to break last year´s record number of homicides, officials said last week. The shootings, which authorities suspect were drug-related, brought the number of homicides this year to 33 –just four short of the total for all of last year, police said.

Accor, the French hotel chain, announced earlier last week the appointment of Victor Pang as Vice President of Development for South East Asia, and Raymond Tong as Vice President of Development for Greater China. Mr. Pang has been with Accor for more than 20 years, originally as Director of Sales & Marketing in Singapore. He later held a variety of senior operational positions in Vietnam and Thailand and for the last five years has been based in the Bangkok office as Development Manager for South East Asia.

On the occasion of International Tourism Day on September 27 at the National Tourism Awards Dinner, hosted by the Minister in charge of the Federal Tourism Agency, Mr. Vladimir Strzhalkovski, Le Meridien Moscow Country Club received “The Yuri Senkevich Award for the Best 4+5 Star Hotel in Russia”. The Prestigious National “Tourism Olympus” awards were established in 2003 by the Russian Government to recognize the contributions made by the leaders of the industry and were named after the famous Russian traveler and researcher, Yuri Sinkevich.

The latest bombings on Bali are believed to be the work of three suicide bombers and bore the hallmarks of the Jemaah Islamiyah extremist network, Indonesia´s anti-terrorism chief said last week. Powerful explosions ripped through three crowded restaurants on Bali late on Saturday, killing at least 25 people and injuring more than 100.