Thomas Cook, Germany´s second-largest tour operator, will furlough ten percent of its workforce (as many as 5,000 employees) as a result of record-setting losses the company has endured for a second year in a row and that´s tallied 251 million euros ($341 million), the front office informed in Frankfurt.

Back in 2002, the company´s shortfall rose to 119.5 million euros ($149 million) following the crisis in the travel industry sparked off by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the war in Afghanistan and the struggle against international terrorism.

Chile´s President Ricardo Lagos said today the number of tourist arrivals to his country was up a staggering 22.9 percent during January and February this year, and showed optimism toward the fast-growing pace the local travel industry is taking right now.

During the grand opening of the Radisson Ciudad Empresarial Hotel in Santiago de Chile, President Lagos pointed out that some 440,000 tourists visited the country in the first two months of 2004 for a 22.9 percent jump compared with the same span of time the year before. Those sunbathers -he said- spent $219 million in all.

The number of foreign tourists that visited Brazil in 2003 was up 8.1 percent from the year before, according to stats provided by the country´s Tourism Company (EMBRATUR)

The Department of Researches and Surveys attached to EMBRATUR reported that some 4.9 million sunbathers traveled to Brazil in last year, compared to 3.8 million visitors that chose the South American nation in 2002. Revenues rose to $3.4 billion, up 8.5 percent compared to the previous year.

French hotel and services giant Accor SA reported a 37% decline in profits for the year Wednesday as economic gloom, war in Iraq and the weak dollar weighed heavily on tourism. The group behind international hotel chains Sofitel, Novotel, Ibis and Mercure, as well as U.S. brands Motel 6 and Red Roof Inns, said net profit fell 37.2% to 270 million euros ($330 million), or 1.36 euros ($1.66) per share, in 2003, from 430 million euros, or 2.18 euros per share, a year earlier.

Peru hopes to put big tourist numbers on the board this year and some experts are putting figures in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 percent, Ramiro Salas, the country’s Tourism vice minister, said in Berlin.

Colombian hotel chain Decameron has just announced its intention to pour $150 million into building at least nine hotels in Panama in the course of the coming years.

Jorge Loaiza, a consultant for the Colombian company, told the local press that the decision to build the hotels came over after the tremendous success of the Farallon, a lodging facility some 110 miles southwest of Panama City.