Jamaica will host the annual Caribbean Marketplace, a tourism trade show that has billing as the premier forum for bringing business to the region. The Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB), the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA) and the Caribbean Hotel Association are partnering on its staging, with Half Moon in Montego Bay as the selected venue for the January 9 to 11 event. Jamaica last hosted Marketplace in 1985.

After cracking the much-cherished two-million-tourist plateau this year, Cuba hopes to lure far more travelers in 2005 through conventions and events. During a press meeting at the Triton Hotel in Havana, Conrado Martinez Corona, president of the Cuba Convention Bureau, laid out the list of major events scheduled for the oncoming year. Complete information on lodging options and travel organizational details can be found on the bureau’s new website at www.cubameeting.co.cu.

Jazzmen from fourteen countries, including the host nation, gathered in Havana last week for the 21st Plaza 2004 International Jazz Festival under the auspices of world-class Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes. The annual event brought together the likes of Wagner Tiso from Brazil and France´s Michel Legarnd, who joined maestro Chucho Valdes in a piano concert that featured the coloratura-like voices of Mayra and Caridad Valdes, and the mellower vocals of Beatriz Marquez.

The Eighth International Ortiz-Lachatañere Workshop on African Identity in the Caribbean will come around in Havana from April 5 to 9 next year with the attendance of boldface names from literature, linguistics, philosophy, religion, music and dancing. The event is reportedly aimed at debating the scientific going of social sciences in the fields that both Fernando Ortiz and Romulo Lachatañere devoted most of their lives to.

Every year in December, the Cuban capital becomes a huge movie theater. There isn’t enough time to watch so many films during the Latin America New Cinema Movie Festival. More than a hundred flicks will be vying through December 17 for Coral Prizes in a number of categories. This time around, the event will show eight Argentina-made feature presentations out of nearly two dozen fiction films. Daniel Burman’s The Broken Arm, Lucrecia Martel’s The Holy Girl, and Adolfo Aristarain’s Roma are some of the standouts.

The historic city of Salvador de Bahia, in northern Brazil, was home from December 1 through 6 to Destinations 2004, the first Annual World Summit on Tourism for Peace and Sustainable Development that gathered representatives from 40 countries. Members of private companies and civil institutions, researchers and students who attended the conclave, had the opportunity of coming together in an array of functions and events aimed at sharing information and assessing projects that seek to change the fate of communities and individuals, regions and countries, through sustainable development.