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Saludos
Amigos! Fly Air Highways to the Americas, North
Central and South
 by
Jerry
W. Bird
Our office
just received some interesting material on the
Vancouver Institute for the Americas, which
works on trade agreements, cultural ties and
business ventures with Latin America, just as we've
been doing for Africa as official publishers for
the last 8 years. We'll be featuring VIA's concept
in our magazines and web sites soon. As they say,
385 million poeple speak Spanish worldwide and
another 200 million speak Portuguese. Looks like I
will have to find my first Spanish reader from high
school , "De
Todo Un Poco
- a little bit of everything. For now the web site
is http://www.via.bc.ca
 When
Canada hosted both the World Ecotourism and
the Summit of the Americas in
historic
Quebec City,
we coveried both events in detail for our
ECOTOURISM
SHOWCASE 2003 EDITION.
Our
Editorial Board Chairman, the late Joe Whitehead,
and former publisher of the Journal of Commerce,
believed in extended follow through on key
events. We carry on that
great tradition. About the Americas. The 34
democratically elected heads of government from
North, Central
and South America
and the Caribbean
gathered in historic Québec City for the
Third Summit of the Americas. At the Summit,
leaders addressed common hemispheric challenges,
including economic integration, improved access to
education, poverty alleviation, enhanced respect
for human rights and democratic
development.
anada's
Role: Canada was
chosen to host the Summit at the 1998 Summit of the
Americas in Santiago, Chile. Over 9000 rooms were
reserved by the organization to accommodate the
partici -pants, escorts and media representatives.
The Summit is an extraordinary window for our local
tourist industry.
Other
Features:
In North America, our team launched Air Highways
Magazine in 1996 to celebrate the landmark USA
-CANADA OPEN SKIES Air Agreement and the
continent's entry into NAFTA. Our second mandate
was to showcase the National Airports plan that was
sweeping Canada, setting the stage for overnight
changes at local and regional airports. We laid the
groundwork well in advance consulting with top
management at Transport Canada and getting to know
several dozen Airport Managers, who were the key to
our plan for input and later distribution of
magazines at their terminals and in
flight
At the time
our editorial content focused on 40 regional
gateways in the US Pacific Northwest and British
Columbia, mainly on an inbound basis. We covered
scheduled and charter carriers, seaplanes, business
jets and the popular helicopter airline that serves
Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle. Then, within
months we were given the mandate to produce a
magazine on travel to Africa in partnership with
the African Travel Association, a 25 year old
nonprofit organization, whose offices are across
from the Empire State Building on New York's Fifth
Avenue.
It has been
a wonderful marriage and has broadened our
prospective on travel to such exotic destinations
as Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Mali,
Nigeria, Uganda, Namibia, Senegal, Tanzania,
Morocco and South Africa. These countries were
either hosts of ATA events or stopovers en
route.
Two years
later, thanks to Joe Whitehead, we launched our
first "Apec-Asia
Pacific"
edition to celebrate the Apec Summit (of 18 world
economies) that was held at the Vancouver
Convention Centre, a few blocks away from our
Gastown office. This year Air Highways coverage
expands to the entire hemisphere. with our
"Summit
of the Americas" Edition
of Air Highways. Rather than publish in advance of
the event, we will do a major follow up edition,
summarizing the results and looking upon it as a
'roadmap' to the future.
While we
have an abundance of travel and tourism related
items on Canada and a growing number of US
features, our coverage will soon include Mexico,
Central America, the Caribbean and South
America. Watch
for many new items in these areas.
We invite
individuals from various cities and countries to
send tourism related items for release on this web
site and in our Aviation and Travel magazines.
E-mail: airhwy@dowco.com
Maps, photos and logo graphics courtesy of
Summit of the Americas.
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