Browser add-ons are a great, but not everybody uses them. If you want to build a serious Web business, it is probably still a good idea to have a Website as well. Last year, when Tom Romary launched Yapta he didn’t want to compete with all the other established travel Websites out there. So he created Yapta as a browser add-on that allowed travelers to track flight fares at the exact time when they were searching other travel sites for airfares. (See our initial review here).

Now, 350,000 registered users later, Yapta has finally launched as a full-fledged Website, where you can track fares from 23 different airlines, including American, Delta, United, Jet Blue, Virgin America, and many newly added international carriers (Air France, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Lufthansa). Once you find a flight you like, you can track it, and Yapta will alert you when the price drops. If the price declines after you purchase it, Yapta will help you get a refund or credit from airlines that have lowest guaranteed fare policies (most of them do if you buy directly from the airline, which Yapta helps you do by linking directly to the airline sites).

Unlike Farecast (now owned by Microsoft), Yapta does not make fare predictions. It tracks actual prices and sends you an email alert when the price changes. Says Romary:

Prices are very volatile. What we’ve learned is that the answer to whether it is going up or down is. ‘Yes.’ It is going up and down. People want to know when it happens.

So far, with just its browser add-on, Yapta users have tracked more than one million flights and identified over $60 million in savings. Nearly $50 million of that was identified before purchase, and the rest came in the form of vouchers from the airlines after the fact. Of all the flights tracked, about half (46 percent) saw price drops.

Now that Yapta is a Website, maybe it will be able to grow beyond the niche that it has carved out for itself. If you have time to plan a trip a few weeks out in advance, Yapta can be really handy, especially in conjunction with Farecast which gives you an idea of how low prices on a particular flight might go. Too bad there isn’t an API for Farecast that lets Yapta integrate the prediction feature into its own site, or vice versa.

More travel startup news tonight after Sidestep’s acquisition of TripUp: Yapta, one of the many Seattle-based travel startups (see Farecast and TripHub too), is announcing its second round of venture capital – $2.3 million from First Round Capital, Bay Partners and other investors. The company has now raised a total of $3 million.

Yapta, which launched in May, has a unique approach to saving people money on travel: The core of the Yapta service is a browser bookmarklet or addon that lets users “bookmark” fares that they find on major travel sites. Ten airline and travel sites are currently supported, and many more will be added over time. See a flight you are interested in and bookmark it. The flight and fare information is then stored in your account at Yapta.

Find a number of different flight options at different sites, and then go back to Yapta to compare them. This is particularly useful when you fly Southwest or Jetblue, which do not provide flight information to other services. If the fare increases or decreases before you make a purchase, that will be reflected on the Yapta site.

If you make a purchase by clicking through to the airline or travel site from Yapta, they’ll continue to monitor the price. If it falls, they’ll ping you and suggest you contact the airline for a refund or flight coupon. All airlines offer these on price drops but few consumers follow up. Yapta will help by reminding you.

Yapta, which went into private beta a month ago, had a bad day today. The company’s Pioneer Square office in Seattle caught fire this morning. CEO Tom Romary’s car got a flat tire. And, unsurprisingly, it rained.

But Yapta is celebrating anyway, because they just launched the public beta of the service. The fire was a problem, Romary says. But they were able to move all employees to their investor’s offices and finish things up for the launch.

Yapta is very different from other travel sites we’ve covered. It is not hooked up directly to airlines’ systems (as Expedia and Oribitz are), nor is it essentially a search engine for low fares like Farecast. Instead, they’re using some of the ideas behind del.icio.us and bookmarking to create a potentially compelling new way for people to search for cheap flights.

The core of the Yapta service is a browser bookmarklet or addon that lets users “bookmark” fares that they find on major travel sites. At launch, ten airline and travel sites will be supported, many more will be added over time. See a flight you are interested in and bookmark it. The flight and fare information is then stored in your account at Yapta.

If you make a purchase by clicking through to the airline or travel site from Yapta, they’ll continue to monitor the price. If it falls, they’ll ping you and suggest you contact the airline for a refund or flight coupon. All airlines offer these on price drops but few consumers follow up. Yapta will help by reminding you.

Yapta grew to 5,000 users in private beta and is funded by $750K of angel financing.

Being a web site, the team is somewhat lucky. Their office is in Seattle, but their servers are out of Seatac (WA) and Texas. The engineers will surely be spending a sleepless night at the data center tonight.

I don’t know what it is about Seattle and travel startups, but newcomer Yapta now joins Farecast and TripHub, two other startups we’ve been tracking from that cold, rainy place.

I saw a pre-launch demo of the company yesterday from co-founder and CEO Tom Romary. The site, which should launch around May 15, helps users find deals on flights and (later this year) hotels.

Yapta is very different from other travel sites. It is not hooked up directly to airlines’ systems (as Expedia and Oribitz are), nor is it essentially a search engine for low fares like Farecast. Instead, they’re using some of the ideas behind del.icio.us and bookmarking to create a potentially compelling new way for people to search for cheap flights.

The core of the Yapta service is a browser bookmarklet or addon that lets users “bookmark” fares that they find on major travel sites. At launch, ten airline and travel sites will be supported, many more will be added over time. See a flight you are interested in and bookmark it. The flight and fare information is then stored in your account at Yapta.

Find a number of different flight options at different sites, and then go back to Yapta to compare them. This is particularly useful when you fly Southwest or Jetblue, which do not provide flight information to other services. If the fare increases or decreases before you make a purchase, that will be reflected on the Yapta site.

If you make a purchase by clicking through to the airline or travel site from Yapta, they’ll continue to monitor the price. If it falls, they’ll ping you and suggest you contact the airline for a refund or flight coupon. All airlines offer these on price drops but few consumers follow up. Yapta will help by reminding you.

The company has quite a few sources of revenue. They collect affiliate fees from most airlines and sites if the user clicks through and purchases a previously bookmarked flight. There will be some advertising on the site, and Yapta will offer information on Travelzoo-like “deals” to users who opt in. Finally, for customers who are eligible to receive flight coupons for price drops, Yapta will offer to do all the work to get the coupon for a 10% fee (or a flat yearly subscription fee of $40).

In beta testing with 275 users over the last several months, Yapta found that 34% of purchased tickets became eligible for a refund. The average refund was 16% of the ticket price, or $85. During the beta period that worked out to a total of $28,900 in aggregate potential refunds, or about $100 per beta user. If Yapta can successfully tap into this refund pool and get a share, the numbers look good. More importantly, this is a great service for consumers, who rarely even bother to check for price drops. Users can also use just this feature of Yapta by entering in the flight information on the Yapta site – they are not required to use the Yapta service for research or buying beforehand. For a lot of users, just this one aspect of the service will be very compelling.

I know I’ll be using it.

See Erick Schonfeld for more. He also saw the Yapta demo and wrote about it a couple of days ago.