Giving travelers the opportunity to save

As you may have noticed, airfare prices and hotel rates are highly volatile. The same trans-continental flight or 5-star hotel may be offered for $450 one day and $250 the next. It's a sophisticated game of "supply and demand" being orchestrated by automated yield management systems that are designed to do one thing: maximize revenue. So, how is the average traveler supposed to know when to book a flight or hotel - and feel confident that they're getting a good deal? Use Yapta.

Yapta is intended to help you get a handle on fluctuating travel prices so that you know when to "buy low". Yapta conducts daily price checks on the specific flights and hotels that you choose, and alerts you when prices drop or when they fall within your budget.

Already booked an airline ticket? Yapta can still help you save. Most U.S. airlines have "guaranteed airfare" policies that enable you to claim a travel credit if the price of your flight drops after booking it. Not many people know that the policy even exists - nor do they bother to check the price of their flight after purchasing it. Yapta will track the price of the flights you've already booked and - if the price drops below what you paid - it will alert you when you're eligible for a refund or travel credit from the airline.

Since Yapta was launched in May 2007, the site has alerted hundreds-of-thousands of travelers to more than $300 million in travel savings. Here a look at the people behind Yapta who are responsible for it being one of the fastest growing travel sites on the Web:

Yapta Team

Tom Romary, CEO & Co-Founder

For the past 20 years, Tom has served as a marketing and general management executive for some of the nation's premier consumer brands, from e-commerce to airlines. Before serving as CEO of Yapta, Inc., Tom was Vice President of Marketing at Alaska Airlines (NYSE: ALK) with responsibility for over $250MM in annual revenue and over 2,400 employees. He led Alaska's frequent flier program, customer care call centers, product marketing, advertising and promotions, airport club rooms, and in-flight service and catering. He also launched numerous product innovations, including the digEplayer, an award winning hand-held in-flight entertainment system.

Prior to Alaska Airlines, he was Vice President of Consumer Marketing at Real Networks, where he helped launch the company's music and premium video subscription services. Before his years at Real Networks, Tom served as Vice President of Marketing at Fogdog, Inc. (NASDAQ: FOGD), helping the sporting goods e-retailer grow annual sales from $100K to over $30MM and playing a key role in its successful 1999 IPO. Earlier in his career, he held various management and director roles at Electronic Arts/Walt Disney Software and General Mills.

Tom has an engineering degree from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard. He is an avid traveler and outdoorsman, having climbed Mt. McKinley in Alaska and Cho Oyu in the Himalayas. He lives in Seattle with his wife and three boys.

Sam Kamel, VP, Business Development

Sam leads Yapta's business and corporate development efforts, reaching out to key players in the travel and online industry to forge new partnerships that extend Yapta's unique price tracking and assurance services to travelers everywhere. He also manages ongoing discussions with strategic partners to identify and deliver break through opportunities and reinforce Yapta's financial foundation.

Prior to Yapta, Sam served Fox Entertainment as Senior Vice President, developing and rolling-out of new business opportunities, structuring joint ventures and driving mergers & acquisitions. He covered opportunities ranging from expanding Hulu internationally to creating a mobile television business to launching Honk.com in partnership with MySpace.

Sam's passion for PowerPoint and Excel had him at Microsoft for several years where he led international business operations, strategic planning, communications and PR while living in Paris with Microsoft International. He traveled to over 50 countries in two years and just wish he'ld joined Yapta sooner. While in Redmond, Sam ran business development, strategic planning and M&A for Microsoft's $17B Information Worker Group - firing up OfficeLive and acquiring several companies.

Sam's love for the Internet began with Netscape where he helped build and launch one of the first international e-commerce sites, the Netscape International Store, and managed international search and business development. From there he joined E-LOAN where as VP International he led the company's international expansion into Japan, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. He raised $60M from Softbank, News and Vivendi and built E-LOAN International into a global organization of 200 people.

Before stepping onto the Internet roller coaster, Sam worked in the European and Boston offices of McKinsey & Company. He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell and an MBA from Harvard. He's a decorated U.S. Naval Officer with over 10 years of active and reserve duty.

Michael Carreno, VP, Engineering

Michael is a broadly-skilled engineer, having helped architect some of the Web's most popular consumer software and services, from music to travel. As the person responsible for the technical development of Yapta.com, his work has been critical to the site's success since it first launched in May 2007. His team's innovations and achievements at Yapta have earned the attention from numerous publications and industry organizations as among "the best" on the Web.

Before joining Yapta, he served as a Software Design Engineer at Judy's Book, Inc. where he helped develop the local search architecture while also prototyping new products. Earlier in his career, Michael worked for MongoMusic Inc. where he helped build the site's core music search and categorization technology. He also architected the software design and led the development of the MongoMusic online radio system. This later became Microsoft MSN online radio when Microsoft purchased MongoMusic in the fall of 2000. After the acquisition, Michael continued to work for Microsoft, garnering multiple patents while helping the software giant develop the MSN Music Download service and various aspects of the MSN Entertainment website.

When Michael is not engineering software, he can be found sailing around Puget Sound, tending goal for his hockey team, or piloting small aircraft. He's a graduate of Princeton University with a BSE degree in Computer Science.

Chad McNees, Director, User Experience and Design

For more than 12 years, Chad has been designing Web interfaces that have delighted millions of online consumers. Prior to conceiving the design for the pages of Yapta.com, Chad was a Lead User Experience Designer for Judy's Book, Inc., a popular local search service and social network for sharing reviews of local businesses with friends. In addition to designing all the early and subsequent versions of the site, he also played a critical role in product planning and development. His efforts included in-depth consumer research and user testing which he translated into unique design innovations. He began his career as a Web and Graphic Designer at Applied Health Science, Inc. where he supported the conversion of desktop-based medical applications to Web-based applications and produced interactive training applications.

Chad is a graduate of The Evergreen State College and The Art Institute of Seattle. He currently resides in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood with his wife, Katya.

Dana Dobler, Sr. Manager, Advertising

Dana brings a unique blend of tactical and strategic perspective to Yapta's Online Advertising team. She has worked with some of the world's largest, most trusted travel, automotive, retail, CPG and health companies to create digital advertising programs that consistently exceed agency and client expectations.

Prior to Yapta, Dana was a Product Manager at Reader's Digest Food and Entertaining Affinity, where she launched the company's first ever self-service advertising platform that gave companies with small to mid-sized budgets the opportunity to advertise across top websites including: Allrecipes.com, RachaelRayMag.com and TasteofHome.com. Her success in this role translated to an annual revenue goal in excess of 300%.

Preceding her Product Manager role, Dana was an Account Manager at Allrecipes.com. In this position, she managed numerous implementations of custom advertising programs, including the launch of an interactive Flash app. on Allrecipes Canada for one of the largest CPG's in North America.

Dana holds a B.A. in Communication and a B.A. in Spanish from Whitworth University. She recently returned from a three month trip to South America, where she volunteered for the United Nations in Northern Patagonia.

Jeff Pecor, Sr. Communications Director

Jeff is responsible for putting Yapta.com "on the map", having brought national and international media exposure to the company - and built word-of-mouth among hundreds-of-thousands of travelers. Before joining Yapta in April 2007, Jeff spent 6 years at Barokas Public Relations (BPR), a consumer and enterprise PR firm in Seattle specializing in serving technology clients nationwide. As a Senior Account Manager at BPR, he helped many online companies become "mouse-hold names", including Classmates.com, Allrecipes.com and Concur Technologies. (Working with Concur helped Jeff cut his teeth in the travel space.) Prior to his work at BPR, he served as an Account Coordinator at The Silver Company, a Seattle-based PR firm that also worked with many dot-com clients, including GreatFood.com (now 1-800-flowers.com) and iStartVentures.com. At the start of his career, Jeff spent 3 years as a Sales Representative for SI Technologies (now Vishay Intertechnology), a publicly traded manufacturer of on-board weighing systems.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Journalism from St. Michael's College in Vermont. He currently resides in Seattle with his wife and two children, Ella and Jackson.

Amy Terrell, Program Manager

Amy is one of the founding members of Yapta and oversees the company's customer service team, as well as its premium service offerings.

Prior to working at Yapta, Amy worked as a Program Manager for former Mt. Vernon, WA start up Etera. Prior to Etera, she served eight years at Microsoft, working on various projects within Operations and MSN. She was a Product Manager for MSN Billing where she worked on implementing MSN's billing services. In earlier roles, she served as a Project Manager converting legacy accounting and operational systems to SAP. This included data gathering, creation specification documents, coding, testing, training new users, as well as post-implementation support. These implementations included conversions in Redmond, Singapore and Japan. She also worked as a Business Analyst for TransPoint which was online bill payment service that has since been sold to Checkfree. She has also held various positions within the Operations Group. Earlier in her career, Amy worked at Boeing in Everett.

Amy holds a BS in Business Administration from the University of Washington and a MBA from Seattle University. In her free time Amy is a fan of skiing, boating and fishing. Amy resides in Bellingham with her husband and two sons.

Aaron Hill, Senior Software Engineer

Aaron was one of the first Yapta engineers and is responsible for keeping the bits and bytes flowing as travelers track prices in search for the cheapest airfare. Prior to joining Yapta, where he reigns as the company table tennis champion, Aaron served as Head of Operations at Allsop, Inc. - a computer electronics accessory manufacturer. While at Allsop, Aaron built allsop.com, an online retail website, and streamlined operations.

Aaron attended Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wa before moving to Seattle to help start Yapta. In his spare time, Aaron enjoys home brewing, photography and working on his home automation project.

Joel Dubowy, Senior Software Engineer

Before joining the engineering team at Yapta, Joel was a software engineer at Clearsight Systems, where he worked on a high-speed, automated stock trading system. Prior to that, he spent two years of doctoral study at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he researched image processing techniques in biomedical imaging.

Joel holds a BS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and an MA in Computer Science from City University of New York Brooklyn College. He lives in Seattle with his partner Kate and their son Zach, and enjoys hiking in the mountains, biking around town, gardening, and brewing beer.

Stephen Mullins, Senior Software Engineer

Stephen comes to Yapta from Orbitz Worldwide where he served as a Software Engineer for more than three years. While at Orbitz, Stephen helped open source the company's monitoring library (named "Erma") and co-authored a white paper for the Computer Measurement Group Conference on the capacity and scalability planning advantages of Orbitz's monitoring platform.

Stephen earned a Bachelor's of Science degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago where he graduated with honors. (He majored in Computer Science with an Information Security specialization.) He enjoys contributing to open source projects such as Apache Camel and Mercurial. He also likes to bike to work and enjoys playing chess.

Andy Ramakrishna, Senior Software Engineer

Andy is a Software Engineer at Yapta specializing in web application development. He is an expert at developing software with JavaScript, CSS, web services and many other popular technologies. He evangelizes web standards and software engineering best practices at Yapta.

Prior to Yapta, Andy held software engineering positions at some of the top Seattle companies such as Microsoft, Zillow and Wetpaint where he built revenue generating products, tools, hired top talent, mentored contractors and interns, and was a team player.

Outside of work Andy enjoys camping, mountain biking, barbecuing and attending Seattle cultural events. Andy hails from the midwest where he earned a BS in Computer Science from University of Missouri, Columbia.

Sarah Johnston, User Experience Designer

Sarah's first part time job at the age of 15 was for a local Internet Service Provider where she learned SEO optimization and eventually went on to design Web interfaces for local clients - and she's been hooked ever since. After college her first job was at local startup Judy's Book, Inc., where she supported design and product development along with managing promotions and email campaigns. Before joining Yapta she spent two years at MSN pioneering style documentation for MSN Autos & MSN Real Estate channels, and implementing new branding elements site wide.

Sarah graduated from University of Washington. When she's not making the internet, she enjoys baking and riding her scooter.

board of directors

board of advisors