YTB FAQ's - Team Ubiquity

Some Other Important Things to Know!

How to I find outside vendors' phone numbers (other than those on my Booking Engine)?
To find outside vendors' phone numbers (other than vendors available through your booking engine) you may visit www.otid.com. The Official Travel Industry Directory lists vendors worldwide. If you contact one of these vendors directly, please be sure you identify yourself as an agent of YTB Travel Network and give them your ARC or CLIA number. Verify their commission policy. If you book with one of these vendors, and they pay commissions, don't forget to complete and submit a Commission Claim Form through your Travel Portal.

Why doesn't the booking engine show a lock symbol when processing payment?

Your YTB booking engine actually "frames" the vendor website that is collecting the payment information so you are not able to see the vendor's lock symbol. However, if you right click on the payment screen and select properties from the menu, it should show the address beginning with "https." The 's' after the http means that it is a secure site.

What is the First Class training and the benefits of passing First Class??

1. First Class Training Content

Q: What will the new training include?

A: The FCT is all about travel! Included in the video presentations are training on technology, suppliers/vendors, sales and marketing, group travel, ethics and more. The training will be updated as new travel features are developed.

2. First Class Registration and Fees

Q: What is the cost for first time attendees?

A: First time students of First Class Training will register, pay $149, view the online class and take a brief test.

Q: What is the cost for people who paid and attended First Class Training from August 23 through October 17?

A: Attendees who have completed and paid for a First Class event since Saturday, August 23, 2008 may register and complete the new First Class Training and pay no additional fee.

Q: What is the cost for people who paid and attended CRTA?

A: Attendees who have paid for and completed a CRTA Training may take the new First Class Training for a nominal fee of $39.

Q: How do I access the registration?

A: You may register for online First Class Training through your Travel Portal.

3. First Class Training Benefits

Q: What are the benefits of completing the First Class Training?

A: Successful completion of the new First Class Training:

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Allows the RTA to book travel directly with travel suppliers
Allows the RTA to book group travel.
RTA becomes eligible to enroll in CLIA's certification program (in California the RTA must book $2,500 in travel)
Provides access to enhanced features in the Travel Portal
RTA receives 70% of the travel commissions paid to YTBTN for travel booked (rather than 60%)
Ongoing access to the First Class Training videos for review

4. Future First Class Training Program

Q: Will live trainings occur after October 18 2008?

A: Although there were a number of First Class events scheduled through the end of the year, there will not be any live First Class Trainings conducted after October 18. First Class Training is available online. Events scheduled after Saturday, October 18 will not occur as First Class Training events. These may be replaced with YTB marketing events and will be announced in the BizReport.

Q: What will be different about the online First Class Training?

A: You will now register and pay for FCT through your Travel Portal. You may view the online training at your leisure. You may stop any time you wish and return at your convenience. The training content will be exclusively on travel topics provided by pre-recorded video links. After you complete the course and pass the test, your First Class benefits will be activated.

5. First Class Training Test

Q: Do I have to pass a test to receive the First Class Training benefits?

A: After viewing the online travel training modules, you will complete a test covering the information. The test will be graded and, if necessary, you will have an opportunity to go back and retake the test. Once you pass the test, your First Class benefits will be activated.

6. First Class Training in Canada

Q: Will the new First Class Training be available in Canada?

A: Not at this time. Due to varying compliance issues in Canada, modifications will need to be made to the FCT prior to launching the program there. Stay tuned...

***You become eligible to apply for your CLIA card after you have completed a FCT training class and completed CLIA Requirements listed above.

First, based on what can be found on their websites (www.iata.org and www.iatan.org ) they are not the beginning nor the end of the say-so in the travel industry regarding Internet booked travel.

Read about their foundations:IATA - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) - was founded in Havana, Cuba, in April 1945. It is the prime vehicle for inter-airline cooperation in promoting safe, reliable, secure and economical air services - for the benefit of the world's consumers. The international scheduled air transport industry is now more than 100 times larger than it was in 1945. Few industries can match the dynamism of that growth, which would have been much less spectacular without the standards, practices and procedures developed within IATA.At its founding, IATA had 57 members from 31 nations, mostly in Europe and North America. Today it has some 240 members from more than 140 nations in every part of the globe.The modern IATA is the successor to the International Air Traffic Association founded in the Hague in 1919 - the year of the world's first international scheduled services.

IATAN: The International Airlines Travel Agent Network IATAN's mission is to promote professionalism, administer meaningful and impartial business standards, and to provide cost-effective products, services and educational programs that benefit the travel industry. Through the use of its informational and other resources, IATAN provides a vital link between the supplier community and the U.S. travel distribution network.Basically, the argument these two organizations support is that of traditional travel agents who feel that home based travel agents are not true "professionals"in the travel field.

These groups tend to have members who have made enough noise to where they have a few organization affiliates (tour companies like Perillo Tours and cruise lines like Royal Caribbean) fearing that YTB is in conflict with their tradition on how travel was booked prior to the Internet. Travel agents ALWAYS used referral based, word of mouth marketing. What has them upset is the fact that YTB is growing so rapidly and they feel that any Internet based company the size of YTB will jeopardize their relationships with their current vendors. This is not the case.

YTB is documented by www.dsa.org, as a recently inducted member, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission. When the DSA and the SEC run you through the ringer, and you come up clean, what difference does it make when a group does not understand what you are truly made of? YTB is still a legitimate travel agency.

Comparing apples to apples, IATA nor IATAN have any lasting significant influence over what YTB is truly all about; helping families do better for themselves by teaching them, with no experience necessary, how to use the Internet to their advantage travel-wise and business-wise by creating an army of home based entrepreneurs who refer others to their websites. Royal Caribbean is just a ship that passed in the night who took advantage of the $13,000,000 worth of travel that YTB RTAs sold for RCCL. YTB is basically saying, "Royal Caribbean who?"

YTB has already been on record that they are not concerned with the audiences of well established traditional agencies, but with those who prefer to book their travel online, giving both the online home business owner as well as the vendors a bigger share of the travel marketplace.

As Kim Sorenson said, "We are building a new company with new ideas." The Internet with a new face and a personality that's what is defined as the YTB Referring Travel Agent. And there are a LOT more than just 240 RTA's in the United States, and very shortly, internationally.

Hopefully IATA and IATAN traditional travel agents don't faint when YTB hits 250,000 RTAs by the end of 2009!

Travel will double to $14 trillion by the end of the decade.

The surge of the travel momentum is here. The baby boomer's retiring, 1 every 8 seconds for the next 18 years will ensure healthy consistent growth.

Plus, being in the biggest industry in the history of the world, far bigger even than the oil industry, is the biggest economic clue of all.

Buckle up everyone!

Get ready for the HUGE travel wave. It's at each and every one of our doorsteps right now.

Are we committed to each helping educate someone else who would love to cash in on the rewards with YTB for more time, family stability, health benefits, retirement cushion, and life choice for their loved ones? That's the goal for those of us who are RTAs and serious about it. There is more to life than money: there is the ability to bless others with something that's out there for ALL of us to take part in.

People will never stop entertaining themselves using the vehicle of travel. It happens where we're born, when we die, and everywhere in-between. That goes for people we know, and people we know who know people we don't know, and so on and so forth, for the next 18 years.

Saturation? I think not. . .!