The world’s two biggest aircraft makers, Airbus from Europe and America’s Boeing, are foreseeing a 5-plus percent increase of air traffic over the skies of Latin America and the Caribbean in the next twenty years, according to stats revealed during the International Air & Space Fair still underway in Santiago de Chile.

These forecasts –subject to the industry’s normal going and ruling out the possibility of events similar to the 9/11 attacks- are specifically pointing to a 5.3 percent annual spike.

Consumers are taking to the Web for their bookings in sharply higher numbers, driven online by airline fare wars, high-speed Internet connections that make shopping easier and the tantalizing notion that, just maybe, a jaw-dropping bargain lies only a mouse-click away.

USA Today reports that more than 35 million Americans purchased travel online last year, up 17% from 2002, according to the independent travel research firm PhoCusWright Inc. Nineteen million more researched destinations or prices there, the company said.

Kees Aerts was appointed to serve as general manager of the Grand Lido Hotel, a resort recently opened in Varadero by SuperClubs, the world-class hotel chain. With vast experience in the travel industry, Mr. Aerts had formerly served as general manager of the Breezes Costa Verde Hotel (also owned by SuperClubs) in Holguin´s Playa Pesquero. The fancy five-star Grand Lido Varadero got its big break with international tourists in the second half of March.

Panama’s Congress has just passed a piece of legislation intended to throw the book, with sentences of up to ten years in prison, at those who spread child pornography on the Internet, act as client solicitors for prostitutes (pimps) and spread sexual tourism.

Despite its nearness to the state capital of Yucatan and regardless of a huge historic heritage and gorgeous beauty, tourist authorities in Sisal have barely tapped into its seaport.

Targeting the country’s top hotel chains and other companies linked to the leisure industry, MICALUM, Cuba’s new high-tech building company, keeps on climbing notches for Cuba’s hospitality industry on a pledge to expand its services beyond the island nation’s boundaries.