Appi Travels launched in 2016 and combined travel booking with pyramid recruitment.

The company is still headed up by Danny Gauthier, who previously launched the Ultamex and Wealth Podium pyramid schemes.

Sometime in the second half of 2017 Appi Travels modified their compensation plan.

A BehindMLM reader recently noted the change, prompting a new Appi Travels review.

Appi Travels Products

Appi Travels still has no retailable products or services.

Appi Travels affiliates are given access to a travel-engine operated by an undisclosed third-party merchant.

Access to marketing tools and courses is also provided.

The Appi Travels Compensation Plan

Appi Travels affiliates pay a fee to sign up. Commissions and bonuses are paid when they recruit others who do the same.

Recruitment Commissions

Appi Travels affiliates receive a direct recruitment commission per affiliate they personally recruit:

  • recruit an Explorer affiliate ($75) and receive a $25 recruitment commission
  • recruit a Traveler affiliate ($250) and receive a $100 recruitment commission
  • recruit a Navigator affiliate ($550) and receive a $250 recruitment commission

A 100% match is also paid on recruitment commissions to the first upline (the affiliate who recruited the recruiting affiliate).

Residual Recruitment Commissions

Residual recruitment commissions in Appi Travels are paid out via a perpetual 1-up compensation structure. This structure is tracked via a unilevel team.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

Every second affiliate recruited into the first level of the unilevel team is passed up to an Appi Travel affiliate’s immediately upline (the affiliate who recruited them).

This is true of the entire unilevel team, with every affiliate passing up commissions earned from every second affiliate recruited.

Residual commissions paid out are the same as direct recruitment commissions:

  • Explorer affiliates generate a $25 residual commission
  • Traveler affiliates generate a $100 residual commission
  • Navigator affiliates generate a $250 residual commission

Appi Fund

Appi Fund sees Appi Travels affiliates able to participate in cash gifting.

  • Explorer affiliates buy in for $25
  • Traveler affiliates buy in for $100 and
  • Navigator affiliates buy in for $250

Appi Travels gifting payments are tracked through a 2×2 matrix.

A 2×2 matrix places an Appi Travels affiliates at the top of a matrix, with two positions directly under them:

These two positions form the first level of the matrix. The second level of the matrix is generated by splitting these first two positions into another two positions each (4 positions).

Positions in the matrix are filled when new and existing Appi Travels affiliates make their own gifting payments.

Payments made by the two level 1 affiliates are passed up. Payments generated on the second level of the matrix (4 positions) are retained.

The sum total of these payments is determined by what affiliate tier an Appi Travels affiliate has bought in at:

  • Explorer affiliates receive $75 plus a new matrix position
  • Traveler affiliates receive $300 plus a new matrix position
  • Navigator affiliates receive $750 plus a new matrix position

Travel Points

All three Appi Travels affiliate memberships generate travel points:

  • Explorer generates 250 travel points
  • Traveler and Navigator generates 500 points

Travel points can be put towards purchased travel through the Appi Travels booking engine.

Appi Travels affiliates also receive a 100% match on travel points generated via direct and residual affiliate recruitment (only on passed up affiliates).

Joining Appi Travels

Appi Travels affiliate membership costs between $75 and $550:

  • Explorer – $75
  • Traveler – $250
  • Navigator – $550

The primary difference between the above membership tiers is income potential via the Appi Travels compensation plan.

Conclusion

As with the original business plan, Appi Travels still has nothing to do with travel.

Hardly surprising coming from a company that markets itself as “an automated real-time ATM cash machine”.

Q) Do I need to refer new affiliates?

A) YES. You most certainly do! All affiliates must treat this like their very own business because it is your own business.

If you become an affiliate of Appi Travels and don’t share and refer others, you will not make any commissions.

As the above, taken from the Appi Travels FAQ, spells out, the name of the game is still affiliate recruitment.

What Appi Travels has since added to its compensation plan since launch is cash gifting.

Billed as “Appi Fund”, Appi Travels affiliates pay a gifting fee and then receive gifting payments from other affiliates.

Affiliates are now able to receive 100% donations from other affiliates.

The pseudo-compliance ruse is that gifting payments will enable Appi Travels affiliates to “travel the world for free”, however from a regulatory compliance perspective what gifting payments are used for is irrelevant.

Ever suckers for financial ruin, it seems Nigeria is currently the only market keeping Danny Gauthier’s scamming alive.

So much so that when Appi Travels launched its cash gifting component, Gauthier was in Nigeria to personally market it.

Today Alexa estimates that Nigeria makes up 88% of traffic to the Appi Travels website.

As with pyramid schemes, the longevity of cash gifting scams hinges on affiliate recruitment.

Once that slows down, the majority of Appi Travels affiliates will find themselves in stalled matrices.

This will see them unable to steal back what they spent on matrix positions, in addition to losses incurred through the initial affiliate fee.

Appi Travel’s use of bitcoin suggests Gauthier has upped his scam game,.

The use of bitcoin will all but guarantee Gauthier’s victims will be unable to recover wide-spread losses when the time comes.

 

Update 22nd March 2019 – Appi Travels recruitment in Nigeria has completely collapsed.

Throughout the second half of 2018 Danny Gauthier reworked and added to the compensation plan. In March 2019 BehindMLM published its second updated Appi Travels review.

 

Update 2nd July 2022 – Appi Travels has collapsed. As of June 30th, Danny Gauthier has pulled the company’s website offline.