
Rio de Janeiro's Maracana Stadium, which is due to stage the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics as well as the 2014 World Cup final, is to get a 300 million US dollars face-lift, announced the city's Secretary of Sports and Tourism.

The ferry route linking Gibraltar and Algeciras reopened for business this week, forty years after it was forced to shut down by the closure of the border between Spain and the Rock, reports the Gibraltar Chronicle.

One million air travellers have breathed a sigh of relief after a British judge ruled that a planned 12-day Christmas strike by British Airways cabin crew could not go ahead. The airline won its legal challenge after claiming that Unite had balloted hundreds of members who had subsequently left the company.

British military personnel were assured Thursday that they would not be stranded in the Falkland Islands despite the collapse of the only airline that flies direct to the Islands from the UK.

Scotland's biggest airline, Edinburgh-based Flyglobespan and also responsible for the UK Ministry of Defence air link with the Falkland Islands was placed Wednesday in administration with all scheduled flights cancelled.

When most of us need digestive, analgesic, anti-inflammatory or antibiotic medicinal treatments, we walk down the street to the nearest pharmacy. When the indigenous Huilliche in the south of Chile need medicine, they stroll into the forest.

There are fears that a shipping tragedy in the Antarctic is a disaster waiting to happen if the tourism industry is not regulated. A major international meeting of Antarctic Treaty Experts is taking place in New Zealand to discuss the issues.

Uruguay’s Ministry of Tourism forecasts some 400.000 tourists and crew members will be visiting the country during this summer cruise season, which represents a slight increase over the previous year.

The US World Monuments Fund, together with Chile’s forestry agency CONAF, has designed a visitors’ centre on Easter Island to enhance sustainable tourism. The project, valued at more than 460.000 USD, will be built at the entrance to the ceremonial village of Orongo.

In an attempt to survive the economic crisis and the depreciating US dollar, Chile’s tourism industry has amplified national travel promotions targeting local and foreign vacationers.