Lan Chile Airlines raked in $48.1 million in the first quarter of the ongoing year for a walloping 123 percent increase from the same three-month period of 2003, sources close to the company´s front office informed.

According to a press release issued by the carrier, Lan Chile has posted the best first-quarter numbers in history.

In keeping with the airline´s communiqué, a change in both corporate image and name -now it´s plainly called LAN- played a role in the huge profits reaped by the company between January and March this year.

Mexican President Vicente Fox announced $6 billion worth of investment in infrastructure, with special emphasis on the building and remodeling of roads, seaports and airports, three elements that can contribute dramatically to the development of the country’s leisure industry.

Mr. Fox made the announcement at the closing ceremony of the 29th Travel Marketplace, Mexico’s largest tourist sector that recently came to a successful close in Acapulco.

The Panamanian economy shot up 6.8 percent in the first quarter of the ongoing year compared to the same span of time the year before, with considerable contributions made by the nation’s leisure industry.

Panama’s Finance Minister Norberto Delgado said in a press conference that the disclosed economic numbers match this year’s 4.1 percent growth estimate.

Mr. Delgado said Wednesday the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could augment somewhere between 4.5 and 5.5 percent later this year.

Spanish investors have already anted up more than $900 million into the travel industry of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo over the last seven years, local authorities informed today.

Luis Garcia Silva, Quintana Roo’s secretary of economic development, told Spanish news agency EFE that his state “has panned out to be the investment core of Spanish travel companies.”

A group of American and Costa Rican businesspeople trumpeted their interest in making a megabuck investment in an assortment of tourist projects in Golfito, in southern Costa Rica.

The total cost of the plan that counts on the government’s support will hover around $400 million, Tourism Minister Rodrigo Castro was quoted as saying in local newspaper Al Dia.

German travel agencies are upbeat about their own business expectations for 2004 after the good sale numbers posted during the past Easter holiday season.