Report From Vacation.com's 8th International Conference & Trade Show

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."