InteleTravel franchise/self employment | Mumsnet (2024)

28 replies

It’s worth searching on MN @everysilverliningandallthat as it’s been discussed before and quite recently (you might have found those discussions already.

Essentially Inteletravel is the travel company front to a pyramid scheme called PlanNet Marketing. As with all these shifty companies the money is made from an endless cycle of recruitment not from selling a product or service. It’s the reason why Inteletravel did well during a global travel ban when many were furloughed or had lost their jobs and were ripe for recruitment. How can a travel company do well during a global travel ban? It’s possible to make money but not probable. Someone may pop up to tell you they know someone who says they’ve made a lot of money but 99.6% of sign ups to companies like IT lose money according to research, but that vast majority tend not to advertise their experience.

@JoelDommettsTux are you involved with PM/IT? It’s easier to see a scam if you’re not caught up in it. I think a lot of people have experience of watching friends get burned.

I don’t know about @Mumtrynafigureitout but I’ve been watching MLM pyramid schemes for years and understand how they operate; how they disguise the continuous cycle of recruitment behind sales of product/services to, mostly, people within the scheme. The losses for people are pretty catastrophic, it’s been demonstrated more than once (research by economists such as Jon Taylor and Dr Stacy Bosley) that once expenses are factored in 99.6% of sign ups to schemes like PlanNet Marketing/Inteletravel lose money. It’s a scandal that these businesses can continue to operate as they do.

Sorry, I know your question wasn’t directed at me!

Hi all, I am not here to try and tell you to ‘join my team’ but I would like to share my personal story. I joined Intele travel as an agent 2.5 years ago purely to save/earn on my own family’s travel. I am mum to 3 teenagers and travelling with them is expensive. I work full time so didn’t plan on booking a lot of travel. I certainly didn’t plan on referring the idea to anyone else.

A couple of points:

The majority of agents in the UK are using this to book travel and earn from the travel industry. Only a very small percentage of those are ‘recruiting’ others. I personally was never asked to ‘recruit’ or ‘refer’ the business to others. I joined, tried the product, enjoyed it, told my friends and family naturally because I rated it but had no idea that what I was doing was ‘network marketing’ or ‘social selling’. A friend then asked me how they could do it to. End of the story

^definition of MLM recruitment right there. Do you earn from the activities of those that have joined your team?

I’m glad you said “in my experience” @vics1 because your few examples need to be set against what Inteletravel say is the destination for most of the people involved. Here is the income disclosure that Inteletravel publishes, so this is in their own words.

People who join to sell travel and are not aiming to recruit earn on average $41.64 a year before expenses - these are the earnings of over 92% of those recruited to sell travel by Inteletravel in 2023. That’s about 40c an hour if they work the average of 2 hours a week that Inteletravel claims. The problem is that the income disclosure uses averages which does not give an accurate picture of all the active travel agents losing money every month. Nor do these figures include those that sign up and pay money and drop out quickly. Early drop out with losses is high in all MLMs, but those people are not included. So the picture is actually worse than over 92% earning less than $50 a year.

I’m forming my negative opinion on Inteletravel based on their numbers (and some of the reports I’ve heard over the years). I am very glad you haven’t been stung but you can see that many are being misled and ending up worse off or at least not earning anything. It’s a shame these (flawed but useful) income disclosures are so carefully hidden from prospective reps.

Inteletravel does not seem a good bet for most people to earn even a small bit of extra income. Do you agree, based on what Inteletravel says?

@vics1 I'm glad it's worked for you but I'm very much not incorrect.

I'm a supplier, and know the business of intele and other agencies very well. Hays travel homeworkers for example have over 400 suppliers they can use, mid counties 300.

We do work with inteletravel so have no issue with the agents, they are largely great people like all the other chains - but the figures I quoted were actually shared on stage at the ITW last October and are freely available. You must realise from that that it just isn't a good financial choice for most people?

Hi, thank you for your reply. I don't dispute that Hays may have 400 suppliers but in reality how many of those 400 do their agents use as I know that I don't use many of ours - a handful at most.

Also for the purpose of this conversation and the lady who initiated it I don't believe that she would consider taking a 'gamble' on doing something that may or may not generate her a good income when the cost of entry is £8,000. This is what Hays charge for their new agents. I believe their monthly running cost is £55 as well.

I would say that Hays isn't a good financial option for most regular people. Again, you have to remember the target market. Lots of people who join Inteletravel do so to supplement their income - to earn an extra £500/£1000/£2000 a month or more and for them that is life changing. Would they therefore join Hays for £8,000? I know that I wouldn't have. I enjoy the extra money that I have brought in to my HH thanks to this but would never have outlayed £8,000 for it. I would love to see the stats on how much their independent agents earn after their £8,000 start up cost has been taken into account.

Its horses for courses. Lots in our team have book hundreds of thousands of pounds of travel - I can say this because I KNOW them. My friend booked over £300,000 last year along side her 4 day a week corporate role and 2 young girls. Simultaneously there are lots who don't. It is an effort based business and I'm sure lots blame Intele for that when the 'fault' only lies in one place. Imagine if they had spend £8,000 for the same outcome.

A couple of years ago, Inteletravel gave global figures showing $500M sales and 70,000 agents. Taking what they say are typical commission rates, this works out at around $750 per agent. Ignoring sign up fees, agents pay around $480 per year to Inteletravel, leaving a net profit of $270.

I'm sure there are some people making a decent living from Inteletravel as vics1 claims, but it is clear from Inteletravel's own figures that most don't.

MLMs use average numbers to mislead. Income disclosures, while better than nothing, are somewhat flawed as they don’t include early drop outs who have all lost money and they do not include expenses. This is why the FTC and other economists who have focused on MLM have found that in MLM like Inteletravel 99.6% of those joining the scheme lose money. If, rather than average numbers, we could see typical earnings and a visual representation of where they cluster, we’d have much more useful information. The only way to really make money in MLM is to recruit many others on a continuing cycle whenever you join, with joining early providing a better chance of more unaware victims/recruits.

In the U.K. MLM are not required to product an income disclosure but the appalling outcomes are the same here