In the course of 2003, Mexico’s Monterrey Airport will pour $10 million into refurbishing the terminal’s last-call waiting rooms and building two to three taxiing positions for cargo planes.

The Paradiso Rio de Oro Hotel in the tourist resort of Playa Esmeralda received the TUI-HOLLY award for the second year in a row in an acknowledgement to quality and excellence in service.

Granted every year by the German TUI tour-operator to the best 100 hotels that receive its clients, the facility placed 36th on a worldwide scale and is the only one in Cuba that holds such distinction.

A German tourist got killed as he was assaulted in a recreational center in the Guatemalan capital, the third foreign visitor who is murdered since last December. This situation is making tourist authorities in the Central American country scratch their heads and fear that crime could blur their efforts to develop that industry.

Spokespersons from the Guatemalan Tourism Institute (INGUAT) explained the victim was identified as Hanss Rinhard Ptietsin, 34, who died of a gunshot wound as he was whisked off to the Amatitlan Hospital some 28 kilometers south of the capital.

A jam-packed flight from Miami to Cancun will carry passengers under one condition: travelers won’t need to have any clothes on, yet they ought to behave themselves. A travel agency based in Houston is getting a toehold of a vacation package in which clothes are optional and might as well turn out to be the first nudist flight in history.

According to the website advertising the trip, would-be trekkers from ten countries in the five continents have already logged on to be briefed on the details.

Verger Travels is changing its moniker. Beginning January 1, the company’s name will switch to Barceló Verger Business Travel. Its social reason, however, remains unaltered.

The innovation is the result of its integration into Viajes Barceló Empresas and First Choice Group –an entity that tries its hand at hotels, transportation and travel agencies in Central and South America, as well as in Europe.

Cuba’s Minister of Tourism Ibrahim Ferradaz announced the appointment of Havana’s mayor Conrado Martinez Corona as new chairman of the island’s Convention Bureau. The information was broken within the framework of the Bureau’s yearly meeting held last January 16 at the recently opened LTI Panorama Hotel in the nation’s capital. Mr. Corona now replaces Eulogio Rodriguez Millares who will now hold down new responsibilities within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.