PHOTO: Vacation.com has one of the largest annual conferences in the industry, featuring top speakers, seminars and training sessions.

Vacation.com has long been the largest travel agency marketing group and has evolved into one of the major players in the travel industry today. At its 16th annual conference at Caesars Palace Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in June, it unveiled even more benefits for its members, who collectively belong to the largest agency group in terms of number of locations.

Vacation.com also finally is on track to deliver on what many thought was one of its greatest strengths — its URL. Here are 10 reasons why Vacation.com might be the right fit for your agency:

Get access to the new Agent Snapshot program: When Vacation.com was formed 16 years ago by the merger of two competing travel agency consortia groups, it positioned itself at the forefront of the Internet age with a name that resonated with travel marketing possibilities. There was only one problem: Vacation.com never really capitalized on its name or effectively utilized its unique URL.

Fortunately, all that changed in June, at least to some extent, when Vacation.com unveiled plans for a new website that will boost the online public visibility of its individual travel agents. “We are finally leveraging our greatest organizational asset in conjunction…with the website,” Vacation.com president John Lovell told his members.

Under Agent Snapshot, Vacation.com hopes to marry the enormous potential of its name with the expertise of its member agents. Those agents can now upload photos and descriptions of themselves, their travel experiences and their travel specialties to a new Vacation.com website, which will debut by the end of the year. Those specialties will have to be certified and will be reviewed by Vacation.com peer agents.

Using Agent Snapshot, a tool accessed through Vacation.com’s Agent Universe extranet, Vacation.com members can electronically introduce themselves, their travel experiences, their skills, their locale, and their passions to potential clients. Vacation.com agency owner-managers will then review the Agent Snapshot profiles before posting them to the Vacation.com website.

Other groups, including Virtuoso, American Express and Vacation.com sister company Travel Leaders Franchise Group, have introduced similar agent profiles on their websites aimed at generating more customers and leads. But Vacation.com executives maintain their new Agent Snapshot tool has much more potential to affect the market due to the sheer number of profiles they plan to upload.

“If even a fraction of our tens of thousands of Vacation.com travel agents create and publish their Agent Snapshot for our consumer site, we’ll have enormous fire power in realizing the initial vision for Vacation.com,” said Lovell. “More importantly, Agent Snapshot will ensure that consumers can find the optimal Vacation.com member travel agent who meets their specific needs.”

Benefit from an updated CruisePRO booking tool: Vacation.com used its 16th annual conference to introduce an updated version of its CruisePRO dedicated B-to-B and B-to-C cruise booking tool. Co-developed with Amadeus, the booking tool is available to members through the group’s Agent Universe extranet. Vacation.com agents can now book online 13 preferred cruise suppliers and view five more lines side by side. All those bookings can be connected directly to ClientBase, if the agent uses that CRM tool.

Other features new to CruisePRO include exclusive offers for Royal Caribbean, Norwegian Cruise Line, Viking River Cruises and Disney Cruise Line. In addition, Vacation.com is paying its members an added $1 incentive per booking to use CruisePRO to book cruises.

One of the most interesting additions to CruisePRO, however, is the addition of a direct link to Shore Excursions Group. Shore Excursions allows clients of Vacation.com agents to select and pay for their own shore excursions online for the cruise they’ve booked through their Vacation.com agent, but the agent still gets the commission. Most major cruise lines still do not pay commission on their own shore excursions except for large group bookings.

Get an even more comprehensive Engagement marketing program: One of Vacation.com’s most successful offerings is Engagement, its dedicated marketing program for its agency members. There are now seven 7 million customer names that are part of the Engagement database, according to Jim Nathan, Vacation.com’s vice president of marketing, and a record 2,600 member agencies now participate in Engagement promotions. There are also now 650 agency members in Vacation.com’s Engagement Select program, a plan that works with ClientBase to better target agency customers.

Nathan told delegates that Vacation.com is now upping the ante with its Engagement program, including a complete overhaul of its e-Engagement program for prospects. Email promotions will now be available in a mobile- friendly form and will be customized by travel vertical, such as contemporary cruise, luxury cruise, escorted tour, premium cruise, river cruise, land package, etc.

An updated email design now features an offer that is much more prominent with less text, more visuals and a click touch for the agent’s telephone number.

Sign on with a group that is actively targeting the millennial market: It seems like only yesterday that Vacation.com and other travel agency groups were targeting the massive wealth and travel buying power of the Baby Boomer generation. But now Vacation.com is focusing on a new market.

Steve McGillivray, chief marketing officer for Travel Leaders Group, Vacation.com’s parent, told delegates that there are now more than 80 million millennials in the U.S. (those born between 1977 and 1995) and they have more wealth than ever before. Better yet, 75 percent of them want to travel abroad.

“Agent Snapshot is the latest tool to help you get ready for next generation of travel,” McGillivray told Vacation.com delegates. “Today, most of your business is with boomers, who are still very vibrant travelers. But trust me, the millennials are coming.”

Benefit from an expanded Distinctive Voyages hosted cruise program: Most travel agency consortia and agency marketing groups have major hosted cruise programs. Vacation.com is no exception and it has been steadily growing its hosted offering, called Distinctive Voyages. Indeed, it used this year’s conference to introduce the 2015 edition of that program.

According to Jennifer Coulter, director-product marketing at Vacation.com, the group expects 17,000 customers to travel on 329 Distinctive Voyages departures in 2015. These departures include a dedicated cruise host, a private cocktail party, an exclusive shore event and other features. For 2015, 11 cruise partners will participate, including such companies as Azamara, Windstar, Celebrity, Cunard, Regent, Crystal, Seabourn, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Holland America and Silversea.

Benefit from a larger receptive tour operator program: Nearly every travel agency consortium and marketing group has a program featuring destination management companies or receptive tour operators, who specialize in particular countries or regions. Vacation.com has had such a program, too, but it was geared toward its top-producing agents.

Now, according to Perry Lungmus, vice president-luxury travel for Travel Leaders Group, the In-Country program is now available to all Vacation.com members. The group’s In-Country Partners now include 60 companies serving 80 destinations. These companies deliver privately guided premium and luxury FIT tours; programs for groups, meetings and incentives; VIP corporate transfer services; boutique properties, villas and apartments; day trips and shore excursions. They offer customized programs on a net basis that members can mark up themselves. They can be found using a dedicated In-Country Partners website that searches by continent, countries or company name.

Join a group that has the most agency locations in the market: For the first time in three years, Vacation.com announced that it had added 200 agencies to achieve an industry-leading total of 5,300 agency locations. Indeed, the group now represents 26-28 percent of all agencies, with parent Travel Leaders Group representing 33-35 percent of all agencies in the U.S. This means Vacation.com should have more clout with preferred suppliers in all categories.

Get access to one of the largest annual travel agency conferences: Lovell said this year’s conference was the largest in Vacation.com’s history, with 1,500 total attendees, including 1,100 agents. And next year, Lovell expects 1,300-1,400 attendees at Vacation.com’s second conference at sea.

Vacation.com is set to return to the seas by holding its 2015 International Conference & Trade Show on April 24-May 2 on an eight-night sailing to the Caribbean onboard Royal Caribbean’s brand new 4,180-passenger Quantum of the Seas out of Cape Liberty, N.J.

For more information, call 888-995-4896 or visit www.joinvacation.com.