North Korea will reopen some of its domestic scheduled air routes for the first time in years – another sign of moves to bolster tourism in the isolated country, a China-based tour operator said today.  Foreign tourists have previously had to charter ageing Soviet-era planes to fly between cities which can take up to two days to reach by rail or road.

One way to the world’s heart is through its stomach. That’s the thinking behind Brand USA’s Discover America campaign. The agency has launched a tasty marketing campaign inviting tourists from all corners of the globe to experience America “one dish at a time.”

Over the past decade the Arab world has witnessed a shifting of not only hard power -- which saw the traditional armies of the Arab world in Syria, Egypt and Iraq consumed in internal turmoil -- but also of what Harvard professor Joseph Nye termed "soft power," which has moved from these countries to the resource rich Gulf states.

As President Obama recently announced, the Department of State’s Diplomatic Culinary Partnership, in collaboration with Brand USA, supports the National Travel and Tourism Strategy goal of bringing 100 million international visitors to the United States by 2021. In July, five members of the American Chef Corps will travel to East-Asian markets to promote U.S. tourism and agricultural exports.

A new brand campaign from Tahiti Tourisme seeks to establish a deeper mystique lying beneath the surface of the “picture postcard” beauty of the destination. With the rise of competition in the Pacific from such island destinations as Fiji and the Cooks, Tahiti Tourisme saw a need to create more differentiation. The branding is global and not specific to any particular market.

The annual UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting can be an exciting time for anyone who loves this planet's animals, plants and precious places.This year's meeting, which starts on Monday in Doha, Qatar, is shaping up to be very different story and it could actually prove quite an embarrassing affair for Australia. Firstly, the Australian Government is requesting that the World Heritage Committee remove World Heritage protection from ancient forests in Tasmania so that they can be logged.

A worldwide advertising campaign calling for a boycott of tourism to Botswana, launched by Survival International - the global movement for tribal peoples' rights - has reached hundreds of thousands of travelers. The ad has been published in international travel and lifestyle magazines including Wired, Escapism, Departures and Centurion magazines in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Japan, and the U.K.