Several of the top U.S. air carriers slashed airfares in an effort to be up to par with competitor Delta Airlines that had cut down on plane ticket prices by fifty percent. Delta´s decision unleashed a new price war in less than 24 hours that industry experts believe could only add insult to injury for the already downtrodden airlines.

Executive Chairman of Air Jamaica Limited, Vincent Lawrence, has announced that 35 million US dollars were raised between December 23 and 31 to facilitate the repayment of debt incurred by the airline. The sum includes $5 million of the $20 million, which former chairman Gordon “Butch” Stewart had committed to the government as part of the takeover process.

The World Tourism Organization (WTO) will dispatch a mission to the Dominican Republic in an effort to boost up joint development projects on the Haitian border. The Dominican Tourism Department informed in a press release the WTO delegation will stay in the country for 11 days to sketch out a master plan for the nation´s southwest region that involves businesspeople and governmental officials from both countries.

At least some 2,500 rooms in houses and condos that lodge tourists all year round in Mexico´s Playa del Carmen are being accused of tax evasion and of seriously damaging the finances of licensed establishments that do comply with the 2 percent lodging tax levied on them, Jose Acevedo Peña, general manager of the Mayan Riviera Hotel Association, denounced this week. For his part, Lenin Amero Betancourt, president of the Playa del Carmen Small Hotel Association, indicated those lodging houses and condos resort to the Internet and means of their own for advertisement, yet they benefit from the high-peak travel season because they pay no taxes at all.

The seaquake that hit South East Asia in late December has cost French travel operators as many as €85 million with more than fifty percent of would-be travelers calling off trips to the region, the organization that groups France´s travel agencies and tour operators, CETO, reported this week. CETO execs, who recently sat down in Paris with governmental officials linked to the travel industry, said the biggest dent so far is in the January reservations to travel destinations on the Maldives Islands and in Sri Lanka, with similarly high levels of booking cancellations between February and April.

The amount of foreign tourists that visited Brazil in 2004 peaked 4.6 million, a walloping 12 percent increase from 2003, the Brazilian Tourism Institute (EMBRATUR) reported this week. Estimates made by the South American nation’s Central Bank have it total expenditures by visiting tourists reached nearly $2.9 billion between the months of January and November, up 31 percent from the amount of cash reaped in that same span of time a year ago.