NEW YORK — Scott Tomer, chairman of YTB International, was preaching to the choir, but the message was aimed at the thousands of traditional travel agents who protest that the multilevel marketing company is a pyramid scheme masquerading as a travel business.

"Whether anyone likes it or not, we’re in the travel business, and we’re not going away," Tomer told a group of affiliated referring travel agents at a Nov. 21 sales training session in New York.

Tomer said the company was about to move into its "second wave," a new phase of development during which affiliates who own one of YTB’s travel websites — most of whom also earn income by recruiting others to buy websites — will have greater prospects for success than they have had in the past, he predicted.

That’s because, he said, the company has gotten better at what it does: The technologies are better, the company is better at selling travel and the company has diversified opportunities for site owners with the ShopYTB portal for selling non-travel goods and services.

Tomer said the company would roll out its vision for the future at a Jan. 11 YTB event in Las Vegas. He declined to give details but told Travel Weekly that YTB would announce at the Vegas event, if not sooner, a timetable for its long-pending plan to launch travel agency franchising.

Making the point that YTB is a much better travel seller today than it was in the past, he said the company’s founders, at the outset, did not even know what a group was. Today, he said that the company has 3,000 groups "in process" with Carnival.

As for ShopYTB, it is linked to 600 stores, including Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot. The stores produce commissions for the company and its site owners.

Tomer acknowledged that the earnings per sale can be quite small, but added, "We know the value of dimes and quarters. [ShopYTB] could be big over time."

Tomer, who also is CEO of the company’s YTB Marketing division, made his remarks at a training session hosted by a handful of YTB’s top-producing sales reps in the New York area. The 100-plus attendees were either referring travel agents (which YTB now calls site owners) or their guests.

The speakers provided advice on how best to approach prospective new website owners.

One speaker described ambitious potential earnings of $10,000 a month based on bringing people to the ShopYTB portal.

As for recruiting new website owners, Noah Matos, a director, alternately said it was simple to sell websites and that it takes "a lot of work" to become a director, the designation applied to sales reps who have personally or through their recruits brought at least 500 active website owners into the YTB fold.

In a similar vein, Tomer said, "I can help you do a better presentation, but I can’t help you get off your butt."

Applauding the affiliates’ efforts, he told them he had "never been as excited about our future as I am now."

He said he was optimistic because "we’ve been tested."

"We’ve faced the greatest challenges any company could have faced, and we’re here," Tomer said.

In the last couple years, YTB has seen its number of affiliates drop significantly and has reported large revenue losses in some quarters.

It also has faced litigation brought by plaintiffs seeking to put it out of business, or at least out of the multilevel marketing business. YTB settled the first of those lawsuits with the state of California in May.

Tomer told affiliates that the "challenges are not all behind us, but our past should give you comfort that we’ll figure out a way around, over, through or under challenges."

He recalled that when he and his partners founded YTB nine years ago, they aimed to create the largest travel company and the "most-talked-about company … and we’ve definitely achieved one of those goals."

"When you begin to take business away from others, they will compete to keep business, but they often don’t compete based on facts," he said. "I refuse to stoop to lies, rumors and half-truths."

Tomer said he won’t take time away from YTB to respond to competitors’ barbs. Nevertheless, he said, "I want to have some fun with some recent whoppers."

For one thing, he said, the audience could see from his presence that he was not in prison. Also, Tomer said that his father, Lloyd Tomer, "was not kicked out of the business and is not starting a competing company." Until recently, Lloyd Tomer was YTB's chairman.

The company has been "rightfully" criticized for the amount of money it spent in recent years expanding its staffing and facilities, Tomer said. "But we were working with the momentum" of YTB’s growth, which he said was 300% for three years running.

The critics won’t acknowledge the adjustments YTB has made to cut its costs to save $3 million a year, Tomer said.

Tomer, who was CEO of YTB International until October, said he had never wanted that position. Robert van Patten, who served as co-CEO for a few months, now holds the position exclusively, and "is a godsend to me," Tomer said.

"It has been three months since I met with accountants and auditors, and I’m so happy," he said.

Tomer said he is frequently asked if things have turned out at YTB as its founders had expected. He said the answer was "pretty much yes, but with some surprises both good and bad."

Despite all the setbacks, he said, "I knew we’d be standing at the end."