We are seeing things in a whole new light this week. YTB releases it’s Annual Report on Monday, complete with Total Revenue of $141 Million and $3.2 Million Net Income for 2007, and the value of travel services booked on YTB’s booking engines was $414.5 Million, an increased 84% in 2007. On Wednesday, John Gilliam asks if YTB could be the next On-line Travel Darling and the combination of the two sent the stock upward from a low of $0.65 a share on March 19th, to $3.15 a share on the close of trading on Thursday April 3rd.

Now in a very strange twist, almost as if the stars have aligned in just the right order, we find the Cruise Line that started it all just 6 months ago has its credit rating lowered to “junk status” by Standard & Poor’s. According to Forbes, Royal Caribbean’s sinks to junk due to a heavy fleet investment, financed in part by borrowing, and rising fuel costs as adding pressure to the company’s rating being lowered.

Just weeks ago, Royal Caribbean agreed to work with the Florida Attorney General and will be refunding $21 Million that it slapped on customers back in November of 2007 for fuel surcharges. Maybe they should have kept the $24 Million they had in bookings with YTB and Joystar back in October instead?

After 6 months of trading since the Royal Flush, RCL stock is down 10.77% while the late attention and surge of YTBLA stock has increased 61.53%. It’s a very dramatic turn of events to say the least.

I was over on John’s blog yesterday doing a little reading, and I saw a very interesting comment from a YTB RTA that I want to bring to light. Of course, John’s not talking about the “good news”, and frankly I wouldn’t want to either concerning what’s going on, it doesn’t support his choice in trashing YTB every single day for that last few months. (Correction – he did give us a thumbs up for the stock rebound on Monday, but me thinks he was quite certain that our financials wouldn’t turn out the way they did.)

John’s currently busy avoiding the issue of YTB’s financials and attempting to ask all of us about ATA and what we are doing about all the bookings we have with them now that they’ve ceased doing business. (If anyone knows, please fill him in. He’s dying to know, but I don’t have anyone one on that airline, never have.)

Anyway, when I saw this comment, it put a smile on my face, and it’s one of the first true signs I’ve seen in some time that YTB is beginning to “get it” when it comes to this small group, and if you look, it’s a very small group, of people.

“…if all you TAs really believe that YTB is such crap…then just let the chips fall where they may.If you are so confident that YTBs business model is subpar to yours, then let it go and eventually you will be fine.”

I realize that’s hard to do, even for me. Yes, I’m just as guilty as everyone else. I’ve gradually come to this same realization, and now that I’ve removed myself from the negativity and limited thinking I couldn’t agree more with this statement. The chips are starting to fall, and frankly, it’s looking pretty good for YTB at this point.

What happened 6 months ago was a real shock and both common sense and business sense told me that you don’t throw a company overboard who’s booking $414 Million in travel no matter how small the individual pieces of pie are. Do you think Coke and Pepsi worry about what each individual vending machine does in terms of revenue? Not particularly.

By having millions of these vending machines all over the world is a big reason why Coke and Pepsi battle back and fourth between #1 and #2 year after year. That’s how they sell 1.4 billion servings A DAY.

We’re not out of the woods just yet. We still have IATA to battle with, and we know have a clear sign that is being worked on. I just want to remind everyone in YTB of what Tim and Georgia Dominey wrote in the foreword of my new book released this week, “Keep the main thing the main thing”.

We’ve come a long way in just 6 months.

This model works folks. It works for us and it especially works for the suppliers who have tapped into the pool of vending machines that are out there. There are certainly cases when a purchase from a “Brick & Mortar” would be better suited for the needs of the consumer. No one can deny however, how technology, combined with relationships works as a very effective and stable formula for success.