The World Travel & Tourism Council has announced that its 13th Global Summit will be held in Abu Dhabi in either April or May 2013. The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Eithad Airways will be the official hosts.

Madrid is using a festival to highlight its culinary culture. From Jan. 23 to Feb. 5, Madrid’s streets will host a wealth of gastronomic and cultural activities. Gastrofestival will feature nearly 300 participants. The third edition includes two new sections -- Gastrohealth and Wine Culture.

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) will hold its first Regional Summit on May 16 to 18 in Mexico. The Regional Summit will be hosted in Cancun, Quintana Roo, by the Mexican Ministry of Tourism.

Organized by the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT), the ENTER Conference 2012 offers a worldwide and unique forum for attendees from academia, industry and governments to actively exchange, share, and take forward state-of-the-art research and industrial case studies on the application of information and communication technologies in travel and tourism.

Representatives from Mexico’s Confederation of Female Tourism Workers (Confetur) participated in the Second Cuba-Mexico Women’s Meeting that was inaugurated on Thursday at the Miramar Occidental Hotel in Havana. The closing session of the event took place Sunday at the Club Habana with a lecture by Rosa Marta Brown, president of Infantia.

For the first time, MITT 2012 will be hosting a sea cruising conference on March 22, 2012 in Moscow, Russia, during which cruise operators will be able to meet with travel agents and tour operators to introduce their company and develop business contacts.