Marsans Group will offer regular flights to Peru, Ecuador and Mexico this summer through its air companies Pullmantur and Air Plus Comet, Gonzalo Pascual, president and CEO of the Spain-based tourist group, informed today. “We´re opening a new airline in Chile that´s due to get cranked up a few months from now,” Mr. Pascual pointed out.

The 2004 Americas Soccer Cup, scheduled to take place in Peru from July 6 to 25, will give 200 million viewers from around the world a chance to see the different travel destinations the country has to offer, a report issued by the sport event´s organizers indicates. Tens of thousands of people from 120 nations could feast their eyes on jaw-dropping Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Arequipa, Lima and other sightseeing spots.

The volume of airborne passengers flown by LAN, Chile´s premier airline, went up a blistering 19.9 percent in May 2004 compared to the same month the year before. Execs from LAN, one of Latin America´s main passenger and cargo carriers, said occupancy per flight jumped a couple of notches to 64.8 percent.

Russia´s Aeroflot Airlines, eager to join the Delta Air Lines-headed SkyTeam alliance next year, is revamping service standards, equipment and most importantly its surly and unsafe Soviet-era image in the U.S. According to a report in Travel Weekly, top Aeroflot officials recently flew to New York and Los Angeles to introduce a flurry of developments, including the debut of a frequent-flyer service center for U.S. residents, redesigned crew uniforms and aircraft livery and the introduction of the carrier´s latest premium-class in-flight service on flights to and from California.

The Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) appointed Marcos Agostini as president of the recently created Shared Time Committee that from now on will be in charge of raising efficiency of shared time activities for the hotel industry, one of the sector´s fastest-growing segments as we speak. Mr. Agostini was serving a stint as regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at Interval International, a company dealing with tourism development and promotion.

The travel market between Argentina and the United States is beginning to bounce back, especially in the business travel segment. Following a strong decline triggered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the economic crisis that Argentina went through in 2002, things are now starting to look better for the tourist industry, chiefly as far as the number of business travelers is concerned, according to a report issued by the local Visit USA Committee.