Mexico is hopeful to ward off the impact of new and sweeping security measures aboard U.S. flights on the local leisure industry, the country’s third-largest source of income.

Tourism accounts for 8.1 percent of Mexico’s GNP. The Aztec nation shares a common 1,988-mile-long borderline with the U.S., a country that provides roughly 90 percent of the total amount of incoming tourists.

Paradiso’s website, www.paradiso.cu opens up a new array of options for an agency that promotes and advertises the most important cultural events taking place in Cuba every year.

In a merger with Cubatur, Havanatur and several foreign tour operators, Paradiso’s brand-new portal has the goal of providing tourists with a richer and more diverse island nation from a cultural and artistic standpoint, paying heed to traditions and national identity.

Copa Airlines and Continental Airlines agreed to expand their codeshare agreement to flights in the United States and Central America, a move that will add a hundred more America-bound flights, jumping from 27 to 127 in all.

Dwindling funds for Mexico’s travel industry in 2004 will throw a monkey wrench into future agreements for the country, let alone make a dent in job creation, warned Miguel Torruco Masques, chairman of the Mexican Hotels and Motels Association.

Rides aboard year-stricken, steam-powered locomotives are capturing the attention of scores of trekkers in the travel destination of Jardines del Rey in the northern keys off Cuba, local news media announced.

The sugar-industry tour –an effort to merge local history and culture with tourism- stands out as a highly coveted choice among sunbathers who spend their vacations in this breathtaking tourist circuit lying north of the central main island, some 250 miles east of Havana.

Experience Antarctica, an Argentina-based company, has started out a number of tour flights to the South Pole from the city of Ushuahia, in the southernmost tip of the country at a price tag of $1,470 apiece.

The tourist service for one-day trippers will use a C-130 cargo plane seating up to 70 passengers who will pay a four-hour visit to the Antarctic scientific base of Marambio, a property of the Argentine Air Force.