MEXICO CITY -- The IOC, keen to ditch its past public perception as an exclusive club of jet-setting officials who enjoy free hotels and holidays, has won an important battle by deciding to maintain a ban on its members from visiting cities bidding for the Olympics.

Only six of 118 members attending a three-day International Olympic Committee (IOC) session voted on Thursday to drop the ban which was introduced after the Salt Lake City scandal in 1998 and 1999, the biggest corruption affair in Olympic history.

A return to visits would have been a public relations calamity for the IOC so soon after 10 members were forced to leave the organization in 1999 for breaking rules on accepting gifts from the U.S. city when it was bidding for the games in the mid-1990s.

The Salt Lake scandal led to numerous calls for former president Juan Antonio Samaranch to resign.

Current President Jacques Rogge, a former surgeon who has never accepted an invitation to visit a bidding city, is in the process of trying to take the organization into a new era.

The overwhelming vote in favor of keeping the ban was a triumph for the former Olympic yachtsman who said the visits were not necessary in the decision-making process.

But the most poignant words in the debate before the vote came from Australia's Executive Board member Kevan Gosper.

"The visit process nearly brought us down in 1999.

I urge you not to step back into the past. The past that nearly killed us," he told the meeting.

Cities bidding for the 2012 Summer Olympics, the venue of which will be decided in 2005, will not be allowed to invite members to their cities or visit members themselves.

Strict rules on contact between cities and members has also been part of the 2010 Winter Olympics campaign which will be decided next year.

New York and Moscow have already said they will bid for 2012 and Paris, London and Spanish and German cities could also join the race.

The cities will certainly not have to spend the millions of dollars on the lavish trips which were part of the bidding races in the 1990s, Reuters reported.

Canadian lawyer Dick Pound, who led the investigation into the Salt Lake scandal, said he did not believe the issue would come up in the IOC again during Rogge's mandate which lasts until 2009.