Monday, September 28, 2009

Travelography #158: Global Economy Hurting Tourism, Helping Sharks

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Summary of the some of the more interesting tourism news stories from this past week, most of which are related to the continuing global economic crisis in the tourism industry. There are, though, a few brights spots -- Natonal Parks, Cuba, Haiti, and Paulau's sharks.


This podcast is available at PodcasterNews.com, Blubrry.com, TravelCastNetwork.com, and Travelgeography.info. And also check out Twitter.com/Travelography.

Click Here for ALL of the News Stories discussed in this podcast.

A couple of the top stories are:

International Visitor Spending in the United States Down Sharply in July - July 2009 marks the ninth straight month in which U.S. travel and tourism-related exports were lower when compared to the same period of the previous year, having declined in November 2008 (-4%), December 2008 (-2%), January 2009 (-6%), February 2009 (-10%), March 2009 (-18%), April 2009 (-14%), May 2009 (-23%), June 2009 (-22%), and July (-24%).

To protect tourism Palau creates shark sanctuary - In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Johnson Toribiong declared his country’s entire Exclusive Economic Zone, an area of 629 thousand square kilometers, or roughly the size of France as a "shark sanctuary," which will ban all commercial shark fishing. [I hope they can enforce it! - Alan]