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News that a U.S. government agency doesn't want to admit that its very expensive program doesn't work isn't really news, except when that program is touted as an early detection system to keep flyers and cities safe.

Turkey and Greece were the winners as visitors chose to avoid conflict spots yet still seek out culturally rich destinations along the Mediterranean coast.

Bing has reorganized its search results pages to incorporate the social element, but it really has a long way to go before the service evolves into something really useful for travelers.

Finally, an outcome for Northstar, which had been trying to sell in various phases over the last decade. And PhocusWright changes hand twice in a year. Read through Tom Kemp's remarks, he's just happy the deal happened, which means overall price is low.

Expect Kayak to increase its leave of absence from the classic metasearch approach and to expand into new travel verticals with its Kayak booking path. Others, including Room 77, already are following Kayak's lead.

Start your engines. Kayak is beginning its road show in a bid to raise more than $100 million in an IPO. The company will face tough questions about Google's acquisition of ITA Software and whether it can paint a big enough growth story to satisfy would-be investors.

The new Wyndham Vacation Rentals site offers some modern, e-commerce pizazz. The rebranding to a more widely known brand makes sense, too.

Flipkey will continue to try to differntiate itself through reliable user reviews and inbound traffic from TripAdvisor, but it will need to overcome its parent company's propensity to under-invest in its non-TA properties.

Welcome to the big time, Virgin America. All this growth "don't come easy." Meanwhile, it looks like it is straightening things out with its Sabre reservations system and things should be on track before long.

Travel companies should fine-tune their cloud strategies after an Amazon Web Services outage took down Room 77, Pinterest, Instagram and Netflix. Given the cost-savings and efficiencies of cloud computing, travel companies won't be abandoning such services -- nor should they -- any time soon.

Can Portico by Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato resort to marketing super-exclusive vacation clubs to the mega wealthy? What Greek debt crisis? There probably is a market for this, and Steve Case and a bunch of other venture capitalists are making a downpayment on these clubs' viability.

Everyone on the list's gearing up for an upsurge in tourist interest, though heritage conservation is a tricky balance to build tourism with.