Travel Caution: 5 reasons why I'm not joining WorldVentures

UPDATE: 23 March 2015

This post has been getting a lot of attention recently; my guess is that it's being shared in WorldVentures circuits. I've received a fair number of comments, some constructive, the majority not. I wrote this post six months ago and people are still (!!!) trying to recruit me to join WV, and others seem to think that personal bashing is the best way to get me to change my mind.

I don't really care what happens in the comments section as long as people aren't being blind fucking sheep about a company with problems that they, after all the chatter, fail to satisfactorily refute. Sadly this doesn't seem to be the case - it seems only to be filled with WV worshippers and is reeking of r/hailcorporate.

As a result, I've locked the comments from further discussion. Please, let's talk about something a bit more interesting. This whole business of WorldVentures is boring me stiff. Have a kitten.

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Not too long ago, someone asked if I’d like to be a part of a new business venture in the travel industry. Being a travel blogger and all, and liking to think of myself as generally open-minded, I was pretty interested to sit down and talk about what all of this was all about. What I left the meeting thinking left me more than a little bit on guard.

So, first a bit of a quick run-down on what WorldVentures is.

I hadn’t seen this little blue banner before I met with a representative before, but if his word is to believed then WorldVentures is supposedly big enough that people are posting pictures of themselves with blue “You should be here” banners on Facebook and the like.

Fun, freedom, and fulfilment!

It's a company that sells holidays that are exclusive to club members - so first, you sign up as a member, which makes you eligible to buy vacations or holidays from the company at low rates, such as $200 for a 7-day holiday in the south of Spain.

But wait, there's more! If you get enough referrals, you even get compensated for your efforts from WorldVentures, with the potential to earn money in the range of thousands of dollars a month, car maintenance money, housing maintenance money... That's more than enough money to become a full-time vacationer!

Sounds incredible? Makes you want to sign up yet? Me too. But before you jump on the train, maybe you'll want to read this. Here are five reasons you should be wary of WorldVentures, Dreamtrips, Rovia, and anything else associated with this travel club.

If it's too good to be true, that's probably because it is.

#5 Pretty much a pyramid scheme.

Alright, they’re not exactly a pyramid scheme, but they’re as close as it gets to it. They’re a network marketing scheme, selling a product (their holiday packages) which you can only purchase with a membership and subscription, which you buy through a representative (that's the network bit) - that's how they remain on the technical right side of the law. First, you have to pay money to be part of the club, and then later you pay some more for the right to sell the scheme.

So you pay $200 for membership entry, then $50 every subsequent month, a fee which is waived after you recruit 4 people into your team. Until then, the $50 you spend a month is put into your Rovia/Dreamtrips account, which you can then use to redeem holidays. But in order to recruit people, you have to pay $100 to be given the rights and marketing tools to sell the scheme, and then $10 every subsequent month.

So right off the bat, you're paying either $200+$50 a month to be able to buy holidays, or $300+$60 a month to buy holidays and sell club memberships. You don’t start earning money until you recruit 30 people. Thirty people! So before you even start becoming compensated, you're helping WorldVentures make $6000, and that doesn't include the $50 that these new members have to pay every month.

On principle, I don’t do ANYTHING that tells me I need to pay money to make money. The first month you sign up, you lose money paying for your membership until you get 4 people to join up, and then you stop making payments. Even then, the prospect of seeing the returns on your investment is so dismal - remember, you need to sign up 30 people to start making money.

As a get rich quick scheme, they’re pretty awful. I don't know about you, but the likelihood of me recruiting 30 new people to be a part of WorldVentures is next to nothing. (I'd have more luck paying people to join.) But let's say, hypothetically, that you are in the lucky few that do manage to get to 30 people. What happens then?

You'd start by getting a paltry $500 a month.

That doesn't even cover rent, let alone food, transport, and other generally necessary things you need to be a living human being. If you're in WorldVentures to be able to "Make a living... living!", you're going to be sorely disappointed. You don't get free trips just by being a member - the money for those trips is still coming out of your own pocket. The person making a lot of money off WorldVentures probably won't be you.

The vast majority of its members don’t get paid. In fact, nearly 80% of WorldVentures representatives don’t make anything at all from the scheme.

#4 The sheep herd mentality of its followers

When I was being pitched to about WorldVentures, they told me that their presence in Singapore was ‘new’ and that I should ‘get in early’ on this scheme. Yet, while I was researching about WorldVentures, it seems like at least a third of the complaints were Singaporean! Clearly, the scheme really isn’t as new to the market as their representatives were making it sound.

Already, WorldVentures was investigated in Norway for potential illegal practices. While they were eventually allowed to continue selling their memberships (they're very good at staying just enough on the right side of the law), here are a few of the comments that came up in response:

Cultist alarm bells are going off in my head.

Here in Singapore, it appears that our famous Phua Chu Kang - yes, Gurmit Singh himself - endorses WorldVentures. But just because a celebrity’s face appears on an ad doesn’t mean they actually use it. If you paid anyone enough money to do something, of course they’d lend their face to it.

Hell, if you paid me enough money, I'd probably endorse pretty much anything. David Beckham's on Calvin Klein adverts, but I'm pretty sure he wears underwear from more than one brand.

When I was asking representatives about further sources and credibility and research, they said that I was of course free to do my own research and come to my own conclusions, just as long as I was aware that “This is an idea that a lot of people are very afraid of, so there are people out there who are saying not-so-nice things.” Well, I don’t really know about you, but I’m not too convinced about the credibility of a company whose representatives are so worried about people being 'misled'. A good product usually speaks for itself.

Which brings me to my next point…

#3 The members REALLY don’t know what they’re talking about.

I was shown an example ad of a holiday in Zante, Greece. This very ad, in fact.

Now, let me show you a picture that I took in Santorini, Greece.

If it looks an awful lot like the previous picture, that’s probably because they the same. Zante? Santorini? I wouldn’t trust a travel company that can’t tell Santorini from Zante. Zante, FYI, is another Greek island, known for its rugged coast and for being a nesting ground of loggerhead turtles. Not that it isn’t a pretty tourist destination, but don’t go there expecting to see the white buildings and architecture of Oia.

#2 Their holidays aren’t really any cheaper.

(On that note, they sell holiday/vacation packages.)

If you find the exact same trip, WorldVentures says, for ANY amount less, they will absolutely refund you 150% of the amount you paid AND send you on that trip just the same. So let's say that you buy a 7-day DreamTrip in a 5-star hotel in the south of Spain that costs $200, and you go somewhere and find a trip that costs $199. They'll give you $300, and send you on the trip just the same.

That's $100 that they're giving to you, plus the trip, and in fact most of the time people are able to find trips that are cheaper than what WorldVentures offers, which means they make money that way. (Catch - the refund is in DreamTrips points, so you can't take your money and spend it elsewhere.)

Cheap holidays! Who wouldn't want that?

But the key here is that the price you see excludes airfare. For a lot of travellers, airfare and transport is often the most expensive part of your trip. So if you’ve excluded airfare, of course your holiday is gonna look ridiculously cheap! The $200 holiday that you got in the south of Spain is now going to cost you $1400. But that's still cheap, isn't it? After all, you're getting a 5-star hotel stay, concierge to attend to your every need, free airport pickups, and being treated like a total superstar while you're there. All that for all of $1400! Still sounds like a deal?

Sure, except your $1200 airfare could have been a lot cheaper, and this is why.

Rovia is WorldVentures's official travel booker website - the website you go to if you want to redeem points, buy a DreamTrips holiday, or use your WorldVentures membership benefits in any way. Their cheapest ticket for a ticket from Singapore Changi (SIN) to Malaga Airport (AGP) from 30 Sep to 7 Oct 2014 is US$1134.69.

This is Skyscanner, my favourite air-travel booking website. Their cheapest trip from SIN to AGP from 30 Sep to 7 Oct is, by contrast, US$910.

That's more than $200 over the price that you would otherwise be paying. So your cheap holiday isn't really as cheap as you thought it was. Not quite so great if your intention was to get the best bang for your buck.

Which leads me to the next point...

#1 IT’S NOT SUSTAINABLE.

Too good to be true? That’s probably because it is. How can holidays be provided at that cheap a price? How does anyone earn ‘residual income’ - and for that matter, where does WorldVentures get the money to be able to pay for that residual income? Let’s do the math.

According to representatives, the money you give to WorldVentures will be given back to you in points - so whatever money you give them, you'll be able to redeem via their booking engine, Rovia. That means that as long as you redeem your points, WorldVentures isn't supposed to be actually getting anything. So your $50 a month you get to put toward your next trip booked via Rovia.

Now, even WorldVentures members readily admit that they’re often able to find the same holiday for less than what Rovia, charges. So when they find cheaper prices, Rovia refunds them the whole lot and them send them on their trip anyway. So if a ton of people do this, where does Rovia make money? For that matter, where are they getting the money from to pay people an additional 50% anyway?

So, a lot of people get DreamTrips holidays for free or even get refunded in excess. But how? They can’t keep sending people on trips for nothing.

When I asked representatives about how WorldVentures is able to negotiate such low prices, this was the answer they gave me:

“The current business model is that travel agents buy a lot and then create the demand, so they have to charge you more. WorldVentures presents demand (in the form of membership bases) and then buys to cater for the demand, thus being able to negotiate lower-than-wholesale rates.”

Uh… Alright, so maybe I didn’t do economics in university, but that still doesn’t check out to me.

Surely someone has to pay for the electricity, water, petrol and food that you're going to consume while you're off in your 5-star hotel. Someone has to pay the hotel staff - and the hotel staff have to earn enough money to feed themselves and their families. Someone is paying for your luxurious 24-hour concierge who's treating you like royalty, and someone is paying for all the activities that you're going to be doing while you're there. $200 just doesn't seem enough to pay for all of that.

I don't know if $200 is enough to pay for that yacht.

Now let's talk about their compensation scheme. Let's say that you get 30 members and earn your $500 a month. Let's also say that all the members redeem their points in the form of dubious cheap trips. Where is that $500 coming from? And let's not even talk about the thousands of dollars a month that you're promised if you make the rank of Top Incomer, plus housing and car maintenance. To me, the numbers just don't check out.

Conclusion

The biggest red flag to me is how unsustainable the whole thing is - the money just doesn't check out. Mike Azcue and Wayne Nugent, the two top guns at WorldVentures, have been convicted of tax fraud. And that doesn't even include how, with a lot of MLM and network marketing representatives, every coffee becomes a new opportunity to sell a product. I'm keeping my wallet tightly shut.