Dominican Tourism Secretary Felix Jimenez is trumpeting that TAM, the Brazilian airline, will begin making charter flights to that Caribbean country as early as next July with a view to reach out to other nations as well in the near future. Mr. Jimenez told local news outlets that negotiations with TAM execs are in the final stages before commencing operations that would guarantee a heavier tourist inflow to the Dominican Republic over the next four years.

Argentina’s former soccer star Diego Armando Maradona went to the beach with his daughters last weekend, a day after he celebrated his 44th birthday in a Cuban mental institution where he’s undergoing a rehab treatment for drug addiction. Mr. Maradona spent a few hours in Tarara, a beach resort in eastern Havana, where he took a swim and had lunch with his two daughters, German Matzkin, a Argentinean friend of Maradona’s who lives in Cuba told Caribbean News Digital.

Tourists traveling to Costa Rica will be allowed to flash photocopies of their own passports to prevent them from losing the original documents, local authorities informed this week. The action was taken in an effort to make the more than 1.5 million foreign visitors that trek to country every year feel safer and more secured.

Some 600 European travel agents will visit Panama with the view of learning about the tourist attractions this country has to offer and advertising the nation in the Old World, the Panama Tourism Institute (IPAT) reported. These agents and their entourages are part of an aggressive campaign devised by a number of companies associated to Air Madrid, the Spanish air carrier, that want to know Panama and sell it as a travel destination in Spain and across Europe.

Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has just appointed entrepreneur Daniel Mooney to replace fellow impresario Alejandro Sinibaldi as director-general of the Guatemala Tourism Institute. Caribbean News Digital has learned Mr. Sinibaldi was removed from his post for being a member of the opposition Patriotic Party, whose platform “is heavily at odds with that of the ruling Grand National Alliance Party,” as President Berger himself put it.

Brazilian law enforcement officers thwarted a Germany-based gang of flesh smugglers that used to offer European tourists the possibility of having sex with Brazilian teenagers and used to send women to Europe to become prostitutes in the Old World. The action is construed here as the largest raid ever conducted by federal cops against prostitution in the country, Police Commissioner Fernando Francischini said.