LAS VEGAS—Only Vacation.com members will be able to book the popular four-day
Epicurean Escape land tours at Super Clubs in 2007, the company announced at
its annual convention here Tuesday. This year's five-day Epicurean Escape
festival, "Flavours of the Mediterranean,"
was held at the Grand Lido Negril Resort & Spa. The company is further
upgrading its Vacation Vignettes Program, expanding the number of participating
suppliers from four in 2006 to 11 next year. Next year, Monograms, Keith
Prowse, SilverSea, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Globus, SuperClubs and Windstar
Cruises join original four suppliers HollandAmerica, Avalon
Waterways, Crystal Cruise and Celebrity Cruises. In other news from the
Vacation.com conference, Steve Tracas announced that he has big plans for the
Vacation.com URL. The company's president and chief executive officer told
journalists gathered for the Vacation.com annual convention in CaesarsPalace that he envisions transforming
the Vacation.com URL into a quasi online booking engine available to the
general public. However, Tracas said he would not go the unprecedented route of
allowing users of the site to actually book trips without the aid of a member
travel agent. "The task is how to figure out, how to let the public use
the site without becoming a competitor for our membership or alienating our
membership. In my 60 days we haven't figured out how to do it." Tracas
said he envisioned a scenario where a user creates an itinerary through the
site, but at the last moment it is forwarded to a member agent. The only certainty
appears that something will get done with the URL. "It common
sensical," Tracas said of leveraging the Vacation.com URL. "It's
something that has to be done."