I suppose my blog doesn’t have to revolve around financial planning 100% of the time. Still, financial planners buy plenty of airline tickets to attend national conferences, study groups, and retreats. A little more than one month ago, I started using a tool called Yapta.
I used to fly cross-country quite a bit from 2002 to 2005 and developed some pretty good skills to buy cheap airfares on major carriers. One of my most reliable tools was, and still continues to be, the matrix display from Orbitz. Enter your origin and destination and select the search option for 1 day before and 1 day after your ideal travel dates. The matrix display shows nine different travel options with the lowest prices for each day.
The matrix display provides a compact way to see if there’s any advantage to arriving a day earlier or a day later than your preferred dates. In quite a few cases the difference in fares was pretty substantial (e.g. when a Saturday night stay was included). Still, I would have to log in quite regularly to keep tabs on changes in fares, so it wasn’t necessarily the most efficient way to lock in the lowest deals.
Now I have discovered Yapta and its two functions to find lower prices. First, you can track a proposed itinerary through a small browser add-on or by entering flight information on the website. Yapta tags the itinerary and sends email updates when the price has dropped. Unlike Farecast.com, Yapta will work for travel between practically any domestic cities. Second, you can enter itinerary information for trips you have already booked, and Yapta will send emails when prices drop.
It’s the second function where Yapta has proved quite useful recently. I have several flights that I’m currently tracking, and received two emails on one of my flights as the price has dropped twice. Each time I’ve been able to call the airline and request a voucher for the price difference. So for travel that originally cost about $600, I’ve received $110 in vouchers I can use within one year (but I do have to pay a $10 booking fee as the vouchers can only be redeemed via phone reservations; still I’m $100 ahead for making a 3 minute phone call).
Since I am somewhat loyal to particular carriers, I likely will just buy an itinerary when it is convenient for me and no longer bother to log in multiple times and monitor the price. I can just enter the booking confirmation into Yapta and then call in for vouchers if the price drops in the future. Sure, the $10 booking fee over the phone is a small price to pay, but the convenience of not having to track flights on my own is quite attractive.
So add Yapta to your browser today and begin saving not only money but time.
