Sorensen continues and admits that travel was probably not the best product for YTB and MLM. He explained the newest venture for YTB. "We also sell gourmet coffee, business texting services, green energy products, other power agreements. We are vastly diversified now. We were very focused on travel back in the day."
What remains to be seen is what Jeff Scott of Sixth Scott, LLC will do with the dead wood that YTB refers to as their "travel agents." The agreement is structured based on existing agents coming over to Sixth Scott, but very few agents are productive--most simply sell their own personal travel as is evidenced by their sales and commissions. A YTB insider confided to me that there are less than 200 agents in YTB who produce more than $5,000 in sales per year. If true, Sixth Scott is paying nearly $40,000 per agent for a very mediocre agent.
Will Sixth Scott be willing to retain 30,000 people that buy inexpensive vacations every year or so? Will Sixth Scott be willing to maintain the liability of these same people calling themselves "travel agents" under the Sixth Scott/First Travel Alliance brand?
Will YTB be able to shift their existing independent contractors to Sixth Scott--or will we see a mass exodus? If there is not a MLM element to the Sixth Scott program, I believe there will be a mass defection since YTB has (since its inception) sold the travel agent program on a multi level basis.
One commenter to the TW story summed it up nicely:
Interesting. So bottom line is - if you read between the lines - "our model simply does not work for travel" AND "it certainly was never going to work being run by people who knew nothing about selling travel" AND "we really screwed up early on by not training agents and not demanding any sort of professional behavior from them" AND "now we're going to focus on selling the kind of products MLM really works with - things people don't really need but perceive that they want".
So it looks like anyone who has hung in there with YTB TRAVEL will now be offered the opportunity to stay in but as an Independent Contractor and with First Travel Alliance. I have to assume there will be no more incentive in selling other people "travel stores" but rather that the only money to be made will be via the actual sale of travel.
