According to a new consumer study from American Express, the travel market is going to remain soft for the near future, with hotels and airlines competing hard for a smaller population of vacationers.

Among the general population, the greatest number of consumers said their top priority expenses one year ago were vacations (25%) and dining out (24%). Today, only 7% named vacations as a high priority and dining was named as a high priority for only 8%. Those 7% who still have vacations as a high priority are definitely in the driver’s seat when it comes to getting the most for their budget.

The real takeaway in the report for travel marketers? Go after the young professionals and the affluent. (The typical Luxury Latin America readers, of course.)

“When young professionals who plan to spend more were asked what they would be spending it on, two thirds said clothing (65%), and more than half said dining out (54%) and travel (53%). The affluent who expect to spend more said it would be on travel (56%), dining out (47%) and clothes (43%)”

According to this survey that came out in August, many consumers still haven’t gotten the message that this is a historically great time for travel deals. You know better, so check out our luxury hotels in Latin America then start wheeling and dealing.

If someone has to drop the asking price of their house from $85 million to $72 million, should we feel sorry for them? That’s what has happened to poor Mohamed Hadid, who is best known for building Ritz-Carlton hotels in the 1980s. If you’re in the market for a 48,000-square-foot mansion, here’s the listing.

While much of the press attention regarding the U.S. property bubble has been about subprime loads and foreclosures in the rust belt, the most breathtaking declines have been in California and Florida—the two states that got the most inflated to start with. Many buyers who got in on their ideal gated community around a golf course are finding that it’s not so lovely when the developer goes bankrupt and the weeds start growing in the bunkers.

So what does this have to do with Latin America? Well for one thing, I’d argue as always that you have to know when things are getting frothy and when there’s still plenty of appreciation left. Parts of Costa Rica and the Los Cabos area of Mexico were looking like nosebleed territory three years ago. Now that the flipping up north has stopped, there are fewer buyers willing to pay California prices for a strip of sand or a penthouse. In most of the rest of Latin America, however, there’s not much downside.

But (and there’s always a but), some developers will always get into trouble by overextending. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Marriott is halting all development of its luxury building projects for owners. “The pullback affects all three formats that Marriott sells under its Marriott and Ritz-Carlton brands…Marriott is permanently exiting development of luxury-residential projects…” The article says that the company basically made no money whatsoever on its own projects after subtracting write-downs.

Sometimes bigger isn’t better.

The long-awaited Capella Pedregal resort is now open in the most hopping part of the lower Baja Peninsula: Cabo San Lucas. You’ve probably read about it in magazines, with articles a desk editor put together from a press release, but we don’t work like that. We wait until the resort is actually open for business and we can give the rooms and service a good once-over.

There are few writers as qualified to do that as our new correspondent Marbeth Mellin. She’s the go-to person for all things Mexico at Concierge.com and has written more articles on the country than she can probably count. So trust her when she says, ”Away from the lineup of luxury hotels in Cabo’s Corridor, this stylish hideaway is the undisputed star in Cabo San Lucas.”

Read the full review to get a detailed account of this brash new resort on the Cabo scene: Capella Pedregal Cabo San Lucas

There’s apparently something in the water in Central America that inspires their tourism boards to latch onto silly and meaningless slogans like a birdwatcher reaching for binoculars. The latest one to earn guffaws and ridicule is Panama’s, which is a year old but just got pilloried by this Jaunted post: Panama Picks A Tourism Slogan Reminiscent Of Childhood Trauma, STDs.

What is this inspired tourism slogan? “Panama – It Will Never Leave You.”

Could it be any worse? Panama watchers are having a heyday with this one, wondering whether it refers to malaria, dengue fever, stalkers, or something picked up from a prostitute. That’s one way to get honest feedback I guess. Just put out your new slogan and see how many people make fun of it on blogs and twitter. (If nobody does, it probably means your slogan is just boring, since few of these things seem to actually move the needle in terms of visitors anyway. But better to be boring than a laughing stock.)

Back in 2006, Guatemala launched the focus-group-inspired slogan “Soul of the Earth” and they’ve stuck with it ever since. WTF?! I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean, much less how it applies to Guatemala and not any of its neighbors. Will there be shamans and chanting involved? Or spelunking? Will I feel the ground vibrate during the summer solstice?

Honduras appears to have used three slogans in as many years. I’ve got a hat a local tourism person gave me with the Spanish version of their slogan “One small country, three big worlds.” I put this into an article I wrote for another publication after I returned from there because I thought it nicely summed up the answer to the inevitable question, “Why go there?” You go because you’ve got a great Maya ruins site, nature preserves, and the coral-fringed islands. So the slogan actually means something.

Alas, I then got a wrist slapping from a PR and advertising agency person who had worked with me setting up part of my research there. Apparently her agency had spent tons of money on focus groups and reports to come up with a brand new slogan: “The Central America you know — the country you’ll love.”

Again, are you kidding me? You could slap that same tag line onto Costa Rica, Guatemala, or Panama and nobody would know the difference. That slogan is still up on the agency-built website, but there was yet another one in between those two for a brief time: “It’s All Here In Honduras.” Apparently it wasn’t all there after all. But now Honduras really is looking like “the Central America you know,” coup d’etats and all.

El Salvador and Nicaragua both go for a one-word slogan. Nicaragua’s is simply, “Unique.” El Salvador went for “Impressive!” Well, the waves are impressively grarly in El Salvador I guess and Nicaragua is unique in being the poorest mainland country in the Americas, but neither slogan does much to sell the destination or paint a picture of why anyone should visit. How about just saying, “We’re generic”? Or “You’ll probably have a good time if you come here on vacation.” Pretty much the same thing.

Belize has “Mother Nature’s best-kept secret.” Maybe Mother Nature’s best-kept secret is that the soul of the Earth is actually in Guatemala. And Belize isn’t exactly a secret anymore. But really, at least that one at least doesn’t leave you scratching your head.

So are there any Central American destination slogans that really work? Yes one, and it’s no coincidence that it’s from the country that gets the most tourists by far.

“Costa Rica: no artificial ingredients.”

Nicely played Ticos.

Brazil hasn’t gotten much attention as a real estate investment play for U.S. investors until recently. There’s plenty of beautiful coastline and prices have been good, but it just hasn’t been on the radar here. The flight connections to northern Brazil have left something to be desired, plus there’s the Portuguese language—not nearly as useful as Spanish, the expensive visa each time, and concerns about high crime.

The flights are getting easier though: there are now flights directly from Atlanta to the northeastern city of Fortaleza. Crime is mostly an issue in the big megacities of Brazil, not the sleepy coastal regions up north.

The Europeans have been buying beach property in Brazil for a long time though. The Portuguese, of course, but also oddly enough—as I learned in this article—the Norwegians. See our rundown on the real estate market in one particular stretch of coast: The Draw of Ceará: Real Estate in Northeastern Brazil.