New Zealand's national airline unveiled a giant image Monday of the dragon Smaug on one of its planes to celebrate the premiere of the second movie in the Hobbit trilogy. Air New Zealand showed the 54-meter (177-foot) image that's featured on both sides of a Boeing 777-300 aircraft. The plane is scheduled to fly to Los Angeles in time for the premiere of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," which screens Monday, Pacific Standard Time at the Dolby Theatre.

The ACT Government will launch a $2.6 million campaign to promote Canberra in the wake of this year's centenary celebrations. The campaign includes a new Canberra logo to represent the capital city, with the letters 'CBR' standing for 'Confident, Bold and Ready'. The brand development is the product of a 15-month process, with the full brand set to be revealed in March 2014.

The bumpy ride in the rickety van heads up the steep hill into Morro da Providência, this city’s oldest favela. Last stop: a small, silent square with a hardware shop, bar and pair of young policemen in armored gear toting machine guns, patrolling the still-unopened cable-car station that the city has recently built. The port spreads out below. Spurred by two looming mega-events — the World Cup next year and the Summer Olympics in 2016 — local officials are struggling to reinvent this onetime third-world city with a first-world economy.

Four cities are currently in the running to host the 2020 World Expo: Dubai, UAE; Ekaterinburg, Russia; Izmir, Turkey; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. On November 27, the Bureau International des Expositions will have a meeting of its general assembly to determine the winner. Each city came up with their own proposed theme and objectives for the Expo; read on to find out more.

Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is one of Australia’s premier tourist destinations and a driving force behind the Northern Territory’s $1.5 billion tourism economy. The awe-inspiring red monolith, the largest in the world, attracts climbers eager for a view from its 348 meter peak and trekkers who are keen to walk around its 9.4 kilometer base. Pleas from local Aborigines, as well as new government restrictions, may put an end to both activities – a worrying prospect for tour operators and other local industries that rely on the natural attraction.

Sweden and Switzerland have launched a joint campaign to help Chinese tourists tell the two countries apart. While the mix-up isn't solely a problem for the Chinese, it has become a particular issue for those from the Asian nation because both countries' names are written similarly in Mandarin — Ruidian (Sweden) and Ruishi (Switzerland) — and begin with the same symbol.

When Marie Antoinette wanted to escape the confines and pressures of courtly life, she retreated to her quaint Petit Hameau where she and her companions donned their finest peasant frocks and pretended to be poor. A century later, fashionable Londoners took that pauper fantasy to a new extreme -- nocturnally touring East London's slums, where they gawked at ladies of the night and coined the phrase "slumming it."

The ministry expects tourism revenue to reach $8.8 billion by the end of the year, compared to $10.5 billion registered at the end of last year, Zaazou said on the sidelines of an economic conference in Cairo. Egyptian Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou on Monday said that Egypt had lost 95 percent of its incoming tourism within the past four months, mainly due to advisories issued by several governments against traveling to Egypt.