YTB To Regain Ability To Sell Royal Caribbean Brands

After being cut off for questionable sales tactics, the Royal Caribbean brands are reportedly poised to give YTB another shot.

The cruise line did not quite come begging YTB as YTB indicated they would. It took several multi-million dollar lawsuits from two attorneys general along with mandates that they change their business practices before Royal Caribbean would even consider it.

Someone close to the negotiations has told us that this move is somewhat of a "probationary" trial to see if indeed YTB has changed their methods of business.

Unknown to many in YTB, the company was able to bypass their blackball from Royal Caribbean by running the business through a related company.

We were told that the final details were being worked out along with the conditions under which Royal Caribbean will accept YTB bookings. Barring any last minute glitches, YTB may be able to sell Royal Caribbean brands again by October 1, 2011.

YTB Loses Again In Financial Report

YTB has released their 2Q 10-Q Financial Report and upon a cursory review, it does not look any better.

• The net loss for the fist six months of the year was $2.6 million compared to $903K last year.
• The net loss for the most recent six months was $356K.
• YTB's assets have increased from $15.6 to $17.2 million.
• But their liabilities have increased from $1.3 to $7.6 million.
• $3.7 million of assets are notes receivable.
• YTB has once again changed the terminology to prevent comparisons from previous quarters.
• YTB (once again) no longer seems to be separating travel commissions despite their assertion that travel is back.
• YTB continues to lose people. In December they had 33.7K people and by the end of June they had 25.6K. This is 44 reps per day. This is a net figure.
• To stem the losses, they are re-releasing the travel program. Become a travel agent for $199 and a monthly $49.95 fee.
• To further stem the losses they are trying to charge people $50 per month to hear advice from Coach Tomer.
• They instituted a $3600/month guarantee, but it is predicated on following ALL activities stipulated by the company, which undoubtedly includes buying the travel agent program, the Coach Tomer advice program, various marketing materials from their privately held sister company, and travel and expenses incurred to recruit.
• YTB seems to be upping the use of their privately held printing company owned by Coach Tomer and Kim Sorensen.
• YTB seems to finally realize that people are not buying travel from them with this statement:

• The product sales and commissions revenue decrease is primarily due to a $1.0 million reduction in travel commissions resulting from a decline in the number of customers utilizing us as their travel sale provider in 2011 compared to 2010.

• In June of 2010 YTB had $1.8 million in cash. In June 2011, they have $662K

Statue Of Liberty To Close For Year, YTB To The Rescue

The Statue of Liberty is scheduled to close for up to a year for renovations this fall much to the disappointment of millions of tourists who flock to see the American icon.

However, travel company turned girdle company turned coffee company, YTB International has once again stepped up to the plate and decided to offer to million of tourists what they have been offering their representatives for years--a cheap knock off.

While the real statue will cost $27 million to repair, YTB has offered to blow the dust off of their fake foam statue and offered to float it on a barge adjacent to Liberty Island.  Instead of the iconic torch, the fake statue will fly a flag that says "Bring me your tired, your poor and your gullible for $100 a month."

YTB featured this statue in their 2008 convention just prior to being sued by California for $25 million. YTB paid a reported $8 million for the fraud to a privately held side company owned by Coach Tomer and Kim Sorensen.

There is no word if the National Park Service has accepted YTB's offer.

Did The TravelPro Just Quit?

It seems that a mere 5 days after the TravelPro proclaimed YTB was back with a vengeance, it seems he will be stepping away from the Baptismal font filled with Kool-Aid.

In a post today, the TravelPro announced that he will be moving onto a new opportunity and will be stepping away from his "six figure" (he did not say if there was a decimal point in there or not) travel commission income from YTB to pursue another opportunity.

While he claims he is not quitting, and goes on to laud the YTB program, my guess is that it is a foot out the door. But having seen the way YTB will go after former recruiters in court, I am sure he is being as diplomatic as possible.

Time will tell. He says he will not be updating the blog about YTB too much as he wraps his hands around this other "six figure" opportunity. Stay tuned!

Federal Class Action Suit Reinstated Against YTB - Zam Zuu

Travel Pulse is reporting that a Federal Court has overturned a District Court decision and remanded the case back to District Court.  Initially, the District Court judge dismissed the case saying it belonged in a state court.

A three judge panel has determined that Murphy (District Court Judge) was wrong to dismiss it and was wrong to discharge any out of state plaintiffs since they were indeed harmed in Illinois. The "discharged" plaintiffs are now free to re-join the suit against YTB - ZamZuu.

The suit charges that

The defendant corporations have taken over half a billion dollars from their unsophisticated customers, selling them on the dream of cheap travel and million dollar pay-outs when the only way that plaintiffs and their class could make a net profit was by recruiting others to join the illegal pyramid scheme.

While over half of the its customers received no travel commissions at all, the directors of YTB International, Inc. each paid themselves multi-million dollar salaries while also siphoning tens of millions of dollars from their publicly traded corporation to privately owned corporations that they owned and controlled.

While it remains to be seen if this suit has any teeth--it has been through the wringer for sure--one thing is for certain, it will certainly consume valuable resources from YTB in terms of time and cash to defend.

The cash position of the company was poor last quarter and an updated financial report is due any day now (convenient how it comes out AFTER the convention) which will shed some light.   YTB made several very risky deals in selling their home office.

YTB-Zam Zuu Convention Recap

Here are the key points from the convention.

• Thanks for paying for the Z-Kits, it helped us out with our cash flow, but now that you realize they are not worth anything, we are discontinuing the program.
• Thanks for paying for the $99 broker license to give away free websites. Now that you realize that there is nothing truly special about a shopping portal, we will be discontinuing the program. But thanks for the money, it helped with our cash flow.
• Thanks for buying all the literature and promotional material from our "sister" company. It is now all outdated. Look for new and improved literature that you can buy.
• We need $100 a month from everyone. So when we realized that no one was gonna pay that for Coach's Way, we decided to keep it at $50 a month. But we will put major pressure on you to pay a $50 premium to get more intense training from Coach.  Bingo, we got our $100 a month. We are still not sure what Coach is training you to do, but hey, it's only $100.
• We are going to be re-focusing on travel again. It seems that the whole shopping thing was not working out so we will try travel again and hope no one bothers to Google the name and see the problems. We also hope that no one realizes that we have just lathered, rinsed and repeated. Oh, and hopefully no one will see that bit of news on the class action suit.
• We are not giving up on the shopping. We figure that some of you will still buy into it, so we have put our CEO's wife in charge of a new line of makeup for "women of color". She is the ultimate upline.
• Oh yeah, and we no longer will be offering any cash back for shopping.

No go out and recruit!