The airline industry has perhaps the most cryptic pricing structure known to man and deciphering it to get the best deal is never easy. Yapta (short for Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant), a new startup set to launch by the middle of next month, aims to save you the trouble of figuring out the best price by offering refunds even after you've already purchased a ticket.
We at Compiler generally avoid writing about startup sites we haven't personally used, however Yapta is compelling enough, and has potential enough, that it warrants a look.
Yapta is currently in closed beta but, according to startup watch site TheNext, hopes to go public by May 15. However, early reports suggest that the site will not be the focus, instead Yapta will offer a toolbar bookmarklet that allows you to bookmark and track airfares. It sounds remarkably similar to MPire, but dedicated to airline tickets.
The really intriguing part is Yapta's claim to offer refunds after the fact. It turns out that there is an obscure rule in the airline industry called the “guaranteed airfare rule,” which says that if you buy a ticket directly from an airline and the price drops afterward, you're eligible for a refund.
Yapta is leveraging that voluntary policy as a means of protecting its customer's purchases. According the TheNext the 275 beta testers currently using Yapta “have already racked up nearly $30,000 in savings.”
So what are the airlines going to think of Yapta? The CEO of Yapta seems to recognize that that at least some are going to be less than thrilled. In an interview with TheNext he says:
We'll be sure to keep you posted when Yapta goes public. In the mean time I may have to hold off on buying those summer vacation tickets for a little while.
[As a footnote, for those interested in understanding how airline ticket prices work, travel author Edward Hasbrouck's book, The Practical Nomad: How To Travel Around The World, has the clearest explanation I've come across. He also has some good tips on how to save money on plane tickets.]
