‘I was making no money’: Travel agent side hustle promoted by influencers criticised over fees

Would-be marketers enticed by online talk of entering a world of travel and easy cash find that the reality is rather different

Months before she entered the Love Island villa, the content creator Yasmin Hadlow promised viewers of her online videos that they could “catch flights and get paid mid-air”. All they had to do, she said, was send her a direct message with the word “freedom”.

The 23-year-old is among several influencers and celebrities, including the former Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattison, working for PlanNet Marketing, which recruits people to work as independent travel agents with a separate US business, InteleTravel.

Pattison’s Instagram page, Vickys Vacays, says it helps women “build confidence, income and freedom through a supportive online travel business”.

It sounds like a great way to make money. But the Guardian has spoken to seven people who were recruited as InteleTravel agents by PlanNet Marketing reps, not the influencers mentioned above, who said they struggled to make money once sign-up costs and monthly fees were taken into account.

Some of them said the people who recruited them encouraged them to sign up as PlanNet Marketing reps and recruit others, and that became their main focus rather than selling holidays.

‘I was making no money’

Mark* always wanted to be a travel agent. He was recruited by a PlanNet rep to work with InteleTravel in 2021 when he was 28. He had just been furloughed during Covid, wanted a career change and was looking at different routes to his dream job.

He paid InteleTravel a sign-up fee of about £150, plus £30 to £40 a month for access to its booking system and training.

Agents earn about 70% of the roughly 10% commission suppliers pay on bookings. So, if they sell £10,000 worth of holidays, the supplier pays out £1,000 in commission and the agent gets £700.

After about 18 months working long days, Mark had only made a handful of sales. “I was making no money on the travel side,” he says, adding that the PlanNet rep who recruited him told him “to try recruitment instead, by signing up with PlanNet Marketing”.

If you are an InteleTravel agent, joining PlanNet Marketing is optional. Those who do so pay PlanNet Marketing a separate monthly fee of about £14. They then get roughly $4, or about £3, for every new person they recruit as an active travel agent, plus referral bonuses and rank-based payouts as their “downline” (number of recruits) grows.

“I ended up with a team of 10 people, but it never felt like me,” Mark says. “The whole point of joining was to be a travel agent, not a recruiter.”

PlanNet Marketing’s annual income disclosure statement suggests earnings from recruitment are typically very low. Its most recent figures show average annual earnings across its general base of representatives are about $40.

Mark was with InteleTravel and PlanNet Marketing for about two years. “I made about three bookings and maybe £1,000 in commission, but I was paying £32 a month in fees, plus about £100 to sign up,” he says. “That wasn’t because I was bad at it. It’s not set up for people to succeed.”

A spokesperson for InteleTravel said: “As with any self-employed business owner, there can be no guarantee of continuous profit and success when starting a business … An unwavering guarantee of significant profit is not a foregone conclusion and cannot be guaranteed, as is the case with any form of self-employment.”

The spokesperson said joining fees covered regulatory licensing and memberships, operational insurance, mandatory training and booking systems, to enable travel advisers to make bookings in accordance with the UK’s travel regulatory requirements.

InteleTravel offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so agents can cancel for a refund. Any travel commissions earned during that first month are deducted from the returned amount.

The company also offers a “first-year profit guarantee”, which pledges to refund the difference if an agent doesn’t earn back their fees in their first 12 months, as long as they meet certain contractual conditions.

For example, according to its website, the agent must have “completed one full year of valid adviser status”, purchase branded business cards, create a website, successfully book one completed hotel stay every quarter, and submit their written refund claim within a 30-day window after their one-year anniversary.

Shelley, 52, a nurse from Suffolk, signed up to InteleTravel during the pandemic in 2021 after seeing a Facebook advert. She says: “I’d always loved travelling, and with everything shut down during Covid, I thought: ‘Why not build up some knowledge and training for when things reopened?’”

She says that after filling out a form, she was approached online by a local PlanNet recruiter advertising support, training and “excellent commission”, before being introduced to the recruiter’s manager (also a PlanNet person) on social media. “It was sold really well – the impression given was that you really couldn’t lose anything,” she says.

But she says the reality fell short almost immediately. “The moment you’re out of the money-back guarantee period – I paid a £142 joining fee, which at the time came with a 30-day guarantee – you’re on your own. If I had a question, the manager would say to go and watch the training videos yourself.”

After accounting for spending on business cards, flyers and a website, Shelley estimates her total profit over roughly two years was between £500 and £1,000. “I was told [by the recruiter] I could earn a living from it … I was misled into thinking this could be a full-time job,” she says.

‘Exclusive partner’

PlanNet Marketing says it only works for InteleTravel and is described on the InteleTravel sign-up page as its “exclusive enrolment partner”.

Some critics have suggested that the arrangement is a multi-level marketing (MLM) operation – a legal, but controversial, model in which agents make money through recruitment rather than through selling a product.

PlanNet Marketing did not comment on whether it is an MLM. InteleTravel denies that it is, saying that the two are separate businesses, and that signing up with PlanNet Marketing to do recruitment is an individual’s choice.

On its website, PlanNet Marketing sets out strict rules on how representatives should promote the InteleTravel opportunity. Representatives are told to promote the “income opportunity” rather than travel discounts or perks, and to keep the roles of PlanNet Marketing representatives and InteleTravel travel agents separate.

For example, an Instagram post in August from a PlanNet Marketing and InteleTravel agent promoting the opportunity online said she had booked her “own holidays for years”, never realising “there was another way”.

She said: “Now I still book with those exact same trusted suppliers, but through my own travel platform instead … The only difference is I have access to an even wider range of suppliers, and I earn the commission on every booking.”

Another former InteleTravel agent, Claire*, joined PlanNet Marketing in early 2024 and left this February. She became a one-star director – a leadership rank awarded after recruiting 100 people that PlanNet Marketing says guarantees a minimum monthly income of $1,000 (£754). Claire says she never received that sum.

“By the time I left, I’d recruited about 150 people and was making about $800 a month. Over two years, more than 700 people came through – most didn’t stay because most weren’t making money.”

Claire says many PlanNet Marketing agents recruiting for InteleTravel promoted the opportunity of working as a travel agent as a way for people to save money on their own holidays by earning commission on personal travel and accessing exclusive discounts. But she believes people could frequently find cheaper deals elsewhere.

Appealing to women

When recruiting for PlanNet Marketing, Vicky Pattison’s page specifically appeals to mothers on maternity leave. In one story, she describes the opportunity as “your dream come true”, adding: “Some mummies have even started this on maternity leave and been so successful they haven’t returned to their nine-to-five.”

The Guardian found recruiting accounts that mentioned women, mothers and those with a chronic illness. One account appealed to “fellow chronically ill girlies” who wanted to “put their health first” while working remotely.

The influencers promote InteleTravel and PlanNet Marketing to large audiences. Hadlow leads a team of more than 100 agents. One of her final posts before entering the Love Island villa showed her posing in a series of swimsuits alongside the caption: “Normalise working from anywhere.”

Hadlow and Pattison did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for InteleTravel said: “While it’s regrettable that certain individuals experience struggles trying to launch a travel career, there are thousands of successful award-winning advisers who have taken the time to use the vast array of resources provided by InteleTravel to build their career in a responsible and dedicated fashion.”

Amanda Restivo, the vice-president of compliance at PlanNet Marketing, said: “PlanNet Marketing and InteleTravel are two completely separate companies … People are not required to enrol with both companies; they can choose to be only a rep with PlanNet Marketing or only a travel adviser with InteleTravel.”

Restivo then added: “It takes hard work to make substantial income in this business. Success requires personal effort and dedication.”

* Name has been changed