According to recently released data from the Central Statistics Bureau (CSB) Q1 hotel stays in Latvia grew by 5.9%. Foreign visitors increased by some 9.3%, while Latvian guests grew slightly less substantially. Some 300,000 plus hotel stays were recorded in the report.

Bulgaria’s Varna Airport has been closed due to an incident that occurred sometime this morning. Varna Airport officials are extremely difficult to reach at this moment, but officials there have said the airport will now rep-open at 12 PM local time.

London’s Heatrow closed both runways earlier today when a plan in route from Oslo had to make an emergency landing.

It’s fairly easy to be environmentally friendly at home, where you have easy access to recycling facilities and reusable goods. But when you travel abroad, you’ll often find that these services and items don’t exist.

Coming up next week in Budapest, dotcomhotel’s Hospitality E-Commerce & Revenue Management Conference kicks off May 30th at the Continental Hotel Budapest.

News from Ryanair competitor Wizz Air shows that company pivoting to compete with the world’s most profitable budget carrier. While the Budapest airline lost some 25 routes to Ryanair last year in the UK and Poland, the Hungarian carrier gained a lot of ground in Eastern Europe.

I’m really happy when I see campaigns aimed at promoting the specific attractions of a given place, so it was with pleasure that I discovered that Missouri Tourism and advertising agency-of-record Hoffman/Lewis unveiled “Enjoy the Show” theme in their promotional campaign. This new theme is part of the long-going advertising campaign with the motto “Show-Me State”.

The Polish carrier introduced a new Premium Economy class of service on its Dreamliner flights. LOT is in fact the first European carrier to operate the Dreamliner and will offer special fares for the new class. Customers booking on lot.com. will benefit the special “Premium Club” roundtrip fares that start at USD 1777 from Chicago and USD 1677 from New York to Warsaw.

On Tuesday Croatia Airlines management and the CA pilots’ union mutually agreed on a collective agreement dispute we previously reported on. While pilots may now go back to flying, the airline authorities and flight attendants still are at odds over their issues. The bottom line is, Croatia Airlines has fliers now, but no support on board for passengers, planes will probably remain grounded.

In a period of international crisis, it is good to hear that some areas are performing really well, and tourism seems to be one of these areas. International tourism receipts hit a new record in 2012, according to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer and reached a total of USD 1075 billion (euro 837 billion) worldwide. That is up 4% from USD 1042 billion (euro 749 billion) in the previous year.