tourism and travel

In a somewhat surprising report, The U.N. Environment Programme says one of the most promising green industries -- at least when it comes to creating economic growth, reducing poverty, fueling job creation and addressing major environmental challenges -- turns out to be tourism.

More visitors made their way to Sin City last year compared to 2009, helping to boost room rates at Las Vegas hotels -- even though hotel occupancy actually fell.

Nearly 60 million foreigners visited the U.S. in 2010. Where did they go? The most popular destinations included New York, Orlando, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. The Big Apple is particularly appealing, drawing a record 48.7 million big-spending foreign travelers.

Brazilian and Chinese visitors led a resurgence in foreign tourism spending within the U.S. in the first half of 2010, giving hope to domestic hoteliers, airline companies and others that the travel-spending slump of 2008 and 2009 is over, according to a report released Wednesday.

While the recession and economic uncertainty are still cutting into travel budgets, more than half of Americans are still planning to take a summer vacation this year.

Colorado's ski industry, a major part of the state's tourism economy,is bouncing back after last year's economic downturn kept many vacationers away.

Europeans are freaking out, and the reason might surprise you. Their seven-year-old currency known as the euro has gotten too strong. That's quite a turnabout from the common currency's launch in 2002 when dollar bashing -- and euro boosting -- was as common in the Continent's financial...

Online travel agents are holding up through the recession on business and leisure travel. A new report from research firm PhoCusWright and Compete.com, travel websites showed increases in both monthly traffic and sales conversions for the second quarter of 2009 relative to previous...

Employment related to the tourism industry fell 149,000 in the first quarter of 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. The number of people working in this sector declined to 8.35 million. This is the worst drop the travel and tourism industry has sustained since the terror attacks of...

International visits to the United States fell 12 percent in May 2009 from the year before. Those still flying over spent a lot less – only $9.5 billion, down 22 percent from the same period last year. May was the seventh consecutive month in which international visitor spending declined....