Evolution Travel Review: Paycation travel pyramid clone
Evolution Travel operate in the travel MLM niche, with an address in Las Vegas, Nevada provided on their website.
Further research however reveals this address actually belongs to Regus and is virtual in nature.
Evolution Travel name David McCovy (right) as founder of the company.
As per McCovy’s Evolution Travel corporate bio;
A lifelong entrepreneur, David has founded a clothing store, a restaurant, the largest independent concert company in Las Vegas, and has also invested in a hollywood film.
Persistence from his mother along with time freedom that his traditional businesses didn’t allow him are the things that got David involved in network marketing.
He quickly ascended to the top of the companies that he was involved with.
His passion to help people and to give the average person a platform to succeed is what drove David to found Evolution Travel.
David McCovy appears to have first found success in 5Linx, having risen to the Senior Vice President rank circa 2014.
After 5Linx McCovy joined the since-collapsed Paycation pyramid scheme.
McCovy’s stint at Paycation was brief. In 2015 he ditched the company and launched Evolution Travel.
Read on for a full review of the Evolution Travel MLM opportunity.
Evolution Travel Products
The Evolution Travel website states the company is ‘an affiliate of Archer Travel Service, Inc.‘
Archer Travel Group is a third-party company that provides access to a discount flights, hotels, cars, cruises and vacations booking engine.
Presumably Evolution Travel have white-labeled Archer Travel Group’s booking engine.
This enables Evolution Travel affiliates and retail customers to book discounted travel through the company.
The Evolution Travel Compensation Plan
Evolution Travel affiliates are paid when travel is booked through the company. They are also paid to recruit new Evolution Travel affiliates.
Evolution Travel Affiliate Ranks
There are six affiliate ranks within the Evolution Travel compensation plan.
Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:
- Consultant – sign up as an Evolution Travel affiliate
- Executive Consultant – recruit three affiliates
- Bronze Consultant – recruit six affiliates
- Silver Consultant – recruit nine affiliates
- Gold Consultant – recruit fifteen affiliates, at least three of which are Silver Consultant or higher
- Platinum Consultant – have a total downline of at least three hundred recruited affiliates
- 1 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least five hundred recruited affiliates
- 2 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least one thousand five hundred recruited affiliates
- 3 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least three thousand recruited affiliates
- 4 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least nine thousand recruited affiliates
- 5 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least fifteen thousand recruited affiliates
- 6 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least thirty thousand recruited affiliates
- 7 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least fifty thousand recruited affiliates
- 8 Star Platinum – have a total downline of at least one hundred thousand recruited affiliates
Note that from the Platinum rank no more than 1/3rd of recruited affiliates can come from a single recruitment leg.
Travel Commissions
Evolution Travel share 90% of travel commissions they receive from Archer Travel Group with affiliates.
The affiliate who made the booking (or their retail customer) receives 80%.
Their upline affiliate (the affiliate who recruited them) receives a 10% residual commission.
Residual Pool Commissions
Evolution Travel take an unspecified percentage of monthly company-wide revenue and place is into the Residual Pool.
The Residual Pool is shared with Executive and higher ranked affiliates, with affiliates in each rank receiving an equal share of a set percentage.
- Executive ranked affiliates receive an equal share of 13% of the Residual Pool
- Bronze ranked affiliates receive an equal share of 14% of the Residual Pool
- Silver ranked affiliates receive an equal share of 20% of the Residual Pool
- Gold ranked affiliates receive an equal share of 12% of the Residual Pool
- Platinum, 1 Star Platinum and 2 Star Platinum ranked affiliates receive an equal share of 30% of the Residual Pool
- 3 Star Platinum and higher ranked affiliates receive an equal share of 11% of the Residual Pool
Leadership Bonus
Gold and higher ranked Evolution Travel affiliates receive a monthly Leadership Bonus as follows:
- Gold = $750
- Platinum = $1750
- 1 Star Platinum = $2500
- 2 Star Platinum = $5000
- 3 Star Platinum = $10,000
- 4 Star Platinum = $15,000
- 5 Star Platinum = $25,000
- 6 Star Platinum = $50,000
- 7 Star Platinum = $75,000
- 8 Star Platinum = $100,000
Company Shares
The Evolution Travel compensation plan states that
Consultants receive 20,000 shares at the Gold Consultant level.
Consultants receive an additional 20,000 shares at the Platinum Consultant level.
Evolution Travel fail to provide any specifics about offered shares in their compensation plan.
Scholarship Awards
If an Evolution Travel affiliate signs up for $99, the company puts $1 into a Scholarship Awards fund.
Every six months Evolution Travel award the Scholarship Fund to one affiliate based on the following criteria:
- Consultants, at the time of selection, must have been active for at least 6 consecutive months with no lapse in monthly agency fee
- Must have themselves or immediate family member that will be gifted the scholarship actively enrolled in high school or college
- Consultants must have at one point reached the level of Executive Consultant
Joining Evolution Travel
Evolution Travel affiliate membership is $299 but appears to have been discounted to $30 for some time.
Regardless of whether $299 or $30 is paid to sign up, each Evolution Travel affiliate must pay $69.99 a month to remain commission qualified.
Conclusion
Evolution Travel is essentially David McCovy’s own Paycation spin-off.
Both companies pay travel commissions, however the bulk of their compensation plans focus on affiliate recruitment.
An Evolution Travel affiliate receives 80% of travel commissions generated via Archer Travel Group bookings.
The problem is travel commissions are notoriously thin. Bear in mind Evolution Travel aren’t sharing 80% of the price paid for travel, they’re sharing 80% of whatever tiny commission percentage Archer Travel Group pay them.
The residual 10% is not even worth mentioning.
When you consider each Evolution Travel affiliate is lugged for $69.99 a month, it’s pretty obvious the majority of commission revenue will be sourced from monthly affiliate fees.
Like Paycation, it’s highly likely the majority of commission revenue is sourced from Evolution Travel affiliates, which makes it a pyramid scheme.
This is supported by Evolution Travel’s recruitment-based affiliate rank qualification criteria and up to $100,000 a month paid on recruitment alone.
A truly retail focused MLM travel company would require a set amount of retail travel bookings each month.
Companies like Paycation and Evolution Travel don’t for obvious reasons.
As with all pyramid schemes, once affiliate recruitment slows down those at the bottom of the pyramid will stop paying $69.99 a month.
This will gut the commissions of those who recruited them. And unless those who drop out are replaced by new victims, affected upline affiliates will also eventually stop paying $69.99 a month.
Once this effect trickles far up along the company-wide affiliate genealogy, an irreversible collapse is triggered (as happened with Paycation).
Recruitment isn’t an endless chain, with the majority of Evolution Travel affiliates guaranteed to overall lose money on their $69.99 a month spend.
And the “founder” is a 3 time exfelon out of Las Vegas known for robbing banks and being thousands of dollars behind on child support (deadbeat dad).
Also his uncle Frank Hawkins is known for being a thief and stole money from senior citizens during his time as a city councilman in Las Vegas. Google it all.
You say theres no product line to promote but (Ozedit: Never stated. Derail + spam removed.)
Please don’t make shit up because you want to post spam.
Hey AMBER????
I checked out the David Mccovy and guess what???
I looked at the booking records. Your bitch ass got the wrong dude. Hahahahahaha.
Dont feel bad if your ass gets slapped with a cease order for defamation of character for assuming someones a fraud when hes not 😛 morons.
delete this and I will personally notify them.
Archer has been in business in good standing with many places for 66 YEARS
I think the dude knows what hes doing because theres NO RIP OFF REPORTS and hes not going to associate himself with scumbags.
I think Ill trust him and my friends who are involved over some moron haters getting ready to see their asses in court and the news.
hahahahahaha Dont say I didnt say soooooooooooo.
How many years Archer Travel Group has or hasn’t been in business has no bearing on Evolution Travel being a pyramid scheme.
Yes well, good luck with that and sorry for your loss in advance.
Howd you like it if I falsely accused you of shit I couldnt back up because I looked at your business model and said uhhh it looks like a pyramid scheme ??
Do you morons not have a brain that the SEC and consumer affairs division and other agencies would have figured it out already and got on their ass??????
Wheres the local nevada news????
Theres like a handful right???
IM SURE YOU CAN FIND AN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNO THAT WOULD TAKE ON THE REPORT !!!!!! LOL
If the business model is a pyramid scheme then it’s not a false accusation, is it.
“But we haven’t been shut down yet” is not a justification for fraud.
Facts: Evolution Travel is primarily geared toward affiliate recruitment, with little to no focus on retail sales activity. This strongly suggests the majority of company revenue is sourced from affiliates, making it a pyramid scheme.
The thing about facts is it doesn’t matter who reports them, they remain facts nonetheless.
Amber, that sounds like a personal shot and someone with an axe to grind with a personal agenda to me. How and why would Mr. McCovy’s uncle be involved in your message.
I just wanted to make clear one of the reasons that I joined Evolution was because it was NOT a pyramid scheme. Evolution doesn’t pay for recruiting. You receive no monies for recruiting someone into the business.
I’m not certain but I believe it is the only company where you don’t earn a bonus or commissions for bringing anyone in.
It’s also the least expensive of any MLM that I’ve looked at. It’s only $30 to start a home based business.
I’m not here to offend anyone or to go back and forth I’m just here to say that my experience with Evolution Travel has been great.
The culture is truly amazing and everyone that I have encountered has treated me like family.
But given Evolution Travel’s compensation plan, it’s highly likely the majority of commissions paid out are tied to spend (monthly fees) by recruited affiliates (direct and indirect).
As far as MLM goes that’s still a pyramid scheme.
Oh my ! I have supported my family of 6 for 3 years booking travel with this company on a full time basis. I also have everything I do and go on Facebook. Social proofing! Go ahead take a look. Been to 12 places in 2018. Some were free from companies that we book with.
I sold over 100k with Expedia alone. Evolution sold 10 million in travel last year. I think we do more than team building
Whomever wrote this article , you should look at what they do and how they live.
If this is a scam then why am I living a great life?
Oh yeah I don’t recruit agents ever ! My husband does the team building side and changed a lot of lives and helped lots of people by showing them a better way. Is helping people a scam ?
So because your husband does the recruiting, you think you’re not pyramid scamming anyone? Geez, delusion much?
The majority of participants in a pyramid scheme are guaranteed to lose money. “Helping” people to join a pyramid scheme is a scam.
If Evolution Travel wasn’t a scam, they’d offer a retail membership and publish the percentage of retail memberships sold versus recruited affiliates.
Hi Nicole, I am glad to hear you are doing well. If you don’t mind me asking, how much income do you actually derive strictly from booking travel?
I am surprised that in this techno age people actually still use travel agents. Thank you.
It is a MLM company that actually sells travel. So the company has two parts: MLM & actual travel bookings.
You have the option of doing either one or both. It is a home based travel business so you are self employed.
If you are self-employed you need to hustle to bring in customers and make money. Some people just join ii to travel.
It is a hell of a lot cheaper to do this than using Expedia or Travelocity. Since it is a legitimate home based business you can write it off on your taxes.
Also, you are incorrect about who pays us. Archer Travel does not determine the pay the Vendor does.
Whatever the percentage amount the Vendor pays for us booking trips (the price of each trip is the determining factor) then we get 80% of that.
The MLM side of Evolution Travel lends itself to being a pyramid scheme. What exists outside of that is irrelevant.
If the travel was retail viable, there’d be no need for Evolution Travel’s pyramid scheme style compensation plan.
Have you actually looked at what it costs to have a host for a home based agent? A lot more than what they’re charging a month.
Many hosts to book travel through charge 500 and more just to start up and way more than they are charging a month.
You may want to educate yourself before you start bashing people and their businesses.
What does that have to do with Evolution Travel primarily operating as a recruitment driven pyramid scheme?
If you ever need help planning travel DONT use this agent. They are pleasant with receiving your money but give you complications out this world when we are greatly impacted and can’t travel!!!
While Julie not to respond by email or phone is very unprofessional.
People are so funny I am team EVO all day!!!! I have not been pushed or forced to recruit anyone to become a travel agent. 1st of all it takes a lot of work, time and patience to do what we do as travel advisors and all the company does is support, teach and show us how to be successful. How is that a scam? (Ozedit: derail spam removed)
Nobody can run or have a lucrative business for free. So why shouldn’t there be a monthly cost involved? which includes my own website (which I just priced how much it would cost for someone to a separate website and it’s pretty pricey) trainings and support(real live support), access to a discount directory , discounted travel offers just for travel agents the perks go on and on.
Because any MLM company in which the majority of commissions actually paid out are tied to recruitment is a pyramid scheme.
A compensation plan geared towards recruitment suggests Evolution Travel operates as a pyramid scheme.
Ranting and raving about “JOBs” and other cliches doesn’t justify pyramid schemes.
Oz you are so right about everything. I “applied” to a job posting on Linkdin and immediately was invited to a webinar, hosted by Nikki Lee who immediately said she made over 100k a year, when all other information online says travel agents make around 35k annually.
I tried to find more information about the company and it’s so painfully obvious it’s a pyramid scam.
It’s disgusting that people are selling this a real job when unemployment is so high.
It’s funny that that job seekers automatically call an opportunity a pyramid scheme. (Ozedit: derails removed)
It’s funny how pyramid scammers have to come up with broad baseless assumptions to justify their scamming.
1. Who are these job seekers?
2. Evolution Travel is a pyramid scheme because of its business model, as detailed in the review.
Leave the “eVeRyThInG iS a PyRaMiD sChEmE!” bullshit on Facebook please, thanks.
I was an EVO agent and I agree it’s a scam. Yes you can earn free/discounted trips and yes there are plenty of trainings and idea sharing to help you out, “it works if you work it”. But anyone feeling like you are going to do some training and then be making money hand over fist will be greatly disappointed.
I worked hard daily to make it work. I spent so many hours researching and looking at the best deals for people only to have them say “ let me think it over and get back to you”. Then they book it themselves.
The few bookings I did make were minuscule.
What they don’t tell you until you are a bit further in your training is that you get paid only after the trip is taken. ( most people book their trips 6+ months in advance). So it could be a really good while until you get paid on that trip.
They also don’t tell you up front that if you can’t make your monthly 69.95 payment then you are considered inactive and if you had any pay coming to you that month, then the money rolls back to Archer/EVO.
So not only are they getting the $69.95/month per agent; they are also keeping any pay you were supposed to be getting.
All that time and effort for nothing. I would love to see the amount per year that never gets to the agents!!!
Now some people do make money and good amounts, but I am going to step out on that limb and saw that b**** off from under me and say YES it is a scheme.
Not sure if it’s classified as a pyramid or not; but a SCHEME is still a scheme!!
I would much rather just work for a single vendor(hotel chain, Disney, cruise lines etc) and earn actual money.
I know this review is old, but I only came across this one recently.
In their latest comp plan, it states VERY plainly, your PROMOTION to higher levels (and thus, more bonuses) is DIRECTLY related to how many “IBO Packages” you sold.
Pyramid scheme confirmed!
Will just make a comment in response to Katie. The $35k salary is including an average of a mostly part-time industry.
FT salary in the industry on average is $60k for an affiliate member of a hosted agency (closest model to Evolution/Archer) and $80k for a fully independent agent.
These comp figures are based on tax data which means that in a lot of cases they are artificially depreciated via tax write-offs and their real comp figures may be $15k – $30k higher, including for the part time figure of $35k.
Everybody has to make their own calculation as to whether it is worth it or not for them to pay the monthly fee, but there is real value on offer in exchange for the monthly fee.
The website is really not very valuable currently (although to Evolution’s credit I do see them taking strides to improving the backend and support over time), so I will ignore that, and just focus on the E&O insurance that is provided as part of the cost and the access to the booking portals and the cut they take is similar to the amount of extra discount that you get via bulk pricing at top tier, so in that sense it is a fair trade for somebody just starting out in the industry.
I should also correct some other incorrect information I saw above.
Somebody above claimed that Evolution only shares the percentage that Archer shares with them. That is not accurate if they mean to say that Archer shares an unknown percentage profit with Evolution and then Evolution shares 80% of that amount with the person that booked the travel.
You create your own portals with wholesale travel vendors and directly with the larger providers (like Cruises, Disney, etc). So you see the amount of commission those companies are paying directly on their direct portals and the commission you are claiming is based on those numbers.
I have no idea how Evolution is working with Archer, but they may either have a flat rate they’re paying per year for access to their vendor relationships or it may in fact be percentage based, but whatever they’re paying comes out of the top 10% that is earmarked for Evolution, along with the costs of their internal employees, website uptime, E&O insurance for everybody, etc.
Another thing that is different as stated above compared to what I see is the commission payout.
You have your travel agency fees which you can charge up front to book your time (which is valuable BECAUSE of the network they’re providing you) and you get 100% of that immediately.
The timing of when you receive your commissions for the actual travel depends on the vendor you’re booking through and in general when it becomes non-refundable.
My sense is that their accounting team seems pretty weak and they do not want to deal with returning funds. In fact, this seems like a good point to segue into the negatives that I see with them.
Claiming the commission is a bit of a chore and could be streamlined.
Evolution doesn’t seem to be interested in making money on the retail side and is only looking to sell their memberships which I estimate they’re probably making about $20/member in their pyramid per month.
This theoretically will lead to a very crowded travel agent market. BUT, I would caution against having a 1 size fits all analysis of the situation like the website owner here since there may be market forces in place to prevent the traditional problems.
I do not get the sense that most people doing this program is focusing on recruiting since, I believe most people that are planning on doing this in a sustainable way do not want to get close to the saturation point, and the money you can make by spending your time booking is much more than what you get for the amount of time that you spend recruiting somebody.
Just for scale, the travel and tourism industry in the US is about 2 trillion dollars which probably can comfortably support 40-60k total travel agencies.
Evolution MLM is almost assuredly less than 20k member agencies with varying level of activity on their accounts, so I believe in this case market forces may be a bigger driver of human behavior than the typical boom/bust cycle of pyramid schemes.
For anybody interested in learning more about travel agent income can check this:
hostagencyreviews.com/blog/how-much-do-travel-agents-make-travel-agent-salary
Uh, Evolution is working with Archer by sharing a percentage of whatever Archer pays them to fund affiliate commissions. This is how every MLM travel company is set up.
There might be external financial agreements between the two companies but commission wise this is the play.
This is another logic fail.
You had a logic fail yourself by leaving off the most important part of what I said:
The point is that the percentages of what Evo/Archer combined get and the amount you get are clear because you see the commission the direct vendors are paying Evo/Archer – you log directly into the other portals to book.
The 80% is based off of the commission the direct vendor (Disney, etc) is paying out period.
Just to be fair since you seemed so sure of yourself I doubled checked the contractual wording to make sure it matched what I was seeing in how it works in practice when filling out the commission form.
If there was a hidden amount that Archer was taking out then there would be contractual grounds to sue. The 80% is based on what the direct vendor is paying both Evo and Archer combined.
If one wanted to get into the travel industry what would you recommend as a better approach? There is a bit of a catch-22 type barrier to entry since in order to open a travel agency you need to show that you have been working in a travel agency with valid credentials.
You generally don’t see travel agencies hiring since they’re mostly self-employed people on a PT or FT basis so there isn’t much incentive to expand and train somebody.
Although I’m not a fan of MLM, in this case the value proposition was fair to me, and I’m sure there are other people that would (and do) feel this way.
For arguments sake, let’s ignore that it is impossible to get started on your own without a program like this, and look at what I meant by the amount they take out is equal to the amount of extra bulk discount that the whole group is entitled to from the direct vendor.
Let’s say, based on a real tiered commission platform for a vendor that will remain unnamed, they have 5 tiers at 5.5%, 6.5%, 7.5%, 8.5% and 11.5% depending on volume of bookings.
Let’s say that you magically had your travel licensure and could book travel through this vendor by yourself at 5.5% commission, you are absolutely correct that you can have 100% of 5.5% commission.
Let’s see how this compares for a $3k vacation sale. On your own you will have earned 100% of $165.00. That equals….$165.00. Through this program you will have earned 80% of $345.00. That equals….$276.00. $276.00 > $165.00.
I understand that you hate MLM companies (I do too), and most MLM companies are evil (not disagreeing there).
But, in this particular case, this program actually is a fair deal for SOME people.
I don’t think everybody should jump into this, but the profits that Evo takes I do think they are earning fair and square by making new agents more profitable than they would be otherwise, and opening a door that, in a lot of cases, would be closed otherwise.
They earn it fairly by 2 means.
1, as shown above they provide the benefit of using the whole network’s collected volume of bookings to qualify for top tier, and in some circumstances use the huge network to get special pricing even better than the vendor’s normal top tier commission (or steeper discounts for travelers).
2, they are creating system improvements, training, a reliable network of agents that can back you up when you need help etc.
If they were just squeezing things out of the pyramid structure there is a lot of things that I see here that just wouldn’t exist.
Yeah, except you’re being paid by Evolution Travel and have no idea what their math is.
MLM compensation plan that lends itself to a pyramid scheme = pyramid scheme. Stop making excuses for fraud.
Quick aside: how do you do that cool quotes thing?
Look, I’ll try to understand what you’re saying. Help me understand you.
You say that I have no idea what the math is, but here’s how it works from what I can see on my side and maybe you can point out my mistake.
Step 1: I log into Disney, Expedia, Carnival Cruises or whatever other vendor. I complete the booking and they (not Evolution, not Archer) tell me what the total commission is.
Step 2: I complete a commission tracking form and enter in the total amount of commmission paid and do the calculation myself of what my cut is (Cx80%)
Step 3: Archer pays me 80%
Are you saying that their vendors are helping to cheat me by hiding the actual amounts they’re paying in commission with custom coding into their websites?
How are they secretly hiding those extra percentages that I don’t know about?
I am having trouble thinking of how they would do it without making it look like a conspiracy theory.
Quoting can be done with blockquote tags. Click the (Q) link on any comment and you’ll get an idea of how it works.
That’s great but as far as Evolution Travel the MLM opportunity is concerned, you’re paid by Evolution Travel.
Anything you do or can do outside of Evolution Travel is irrelevant to this review of Evolution Travel.