Yapta Airfare Booking Tool

Yapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) is a startup company that lets users track flights AND get refunds for flights if the price drops after you’ve bought your ticket, somewhat similar to Farecast. When does the fun start? On May 15, 2007.

Yapta will have a website, but the real service is a plug-in you download for your browser that lets you tag a flight on an airlines or travel company’s site. Every time the ticket price changes, you can get an alert. What sets Yapta apart is that it keeps tracking the fare AFTER you’ve bought the ticket, so you can get a refund if the price drops. It’s like free money…or a free voucher – whatever. If you decide to switch tickets, be sure to check the airline’s ticket change fee. It may or may not be worth the refund.

This advantage has saved the testers, who are frequent travelers themselves, about $500 a person in three months.

What’s next? The company has big plans to create an alert system for frequent-flyer awards seats available. That would be the greatest invention known to man. Okay, maybe not the greatest, but pretty darn good. Yapta also wants to expand in to the rest of the travel industry, including hotels, rental cars and restaurants. Good rental car prices are golden, I’ll be happy to see that one.

Via The Next Net.