An Association of Corporate Travel Executives task force has met the Center for Disease Control amid concerns about the threat of a bird flu pandemic. The aim of the meeting was to confirm the nature of the threat and to identify the areas in which the business travel industry could move forward in pandemic preparation. Awareness of the disease´s progress and the efforts to contain and treat it are now especially significant, according to ACTE. ACTE´s website will begin listing the most credible links to health and travel advisories, plus other available resources. The task force will monitor the activities of the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) and report accordingly.

New Orleans tourism officials are asking leisure travelers to wait until the end of the year before returning, and those forced to find alternative destinations range from brides planning dream weddings to conventions of 20,000 people. The plans of tens of thousands of travelers to visit New Orleans were disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. Altogether, New Orleans will lose $3.5 billion in revenue from meetings that are held elsewhere, according to J. Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Hurricane Stan has proven a deadly storm for parts of Central America where many rivers crested their banks, creating dangerous mudslides and flooding, bringing the death toll to more than 100. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Tammy, the 19th-named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, formed October 5 off Florida´s East Coast about 35 miles east of Jacksonville.

The devastation wrought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita on Alabama, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi this month is draining as a much as $50 million a day in tourism revenue from those states, according to the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA). The TIA estimates that the bulk of those losses are in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana, which the association estimates is losing at least $37 million in tourism daily.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings by Northwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Delta´s low-cost carrier Song are expected to have little if any immediate effect on travelers. Longer-term, travelers should watch for route and schedule changes as the airlines make adjustments to cut costs. Fares could drop temporarily as the carriers compete to keep customers and battle discount airlines, but analysts predict the major airlines will eventually raise prices as they struggle to return to profitability.

The tourism business is worth $5 billion a year to New Orleans, and as the evacuation of the city gets underway the travel impact in the Big Easy is just starting to be felt, as airlines cancel flights and figure out whether to offer refunds to ticket holders. And the city´s bustling convention business has, quite literally, been drowned. Southwest Airlines has cancelled 640 New Orleans-bound flights and counting and is offering customers refunds through the end of September. The airline has also removed New Orleans from the list of cities on its Web site.