Tom Romary co-founded Voyager Fund III portfolio company Yapta in July 2006, drawing on his experience in both the travel and Ecommerce markets. Prior to starting Yapta, Tom served as a marketing and general management executive for some of the nation's premier consumer brands. Tom was Vice President of Marketing at Alaska Airlines (NYSE: ALK) with responsibility for over $250 million 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 $100,000 to over $30 million and playing a key role in its successful 1999 IPO. Earlier in his career, he held various management 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, Cho Oyu in the Himalayas and he recently led a team of other Seattle area technology professionals on an ascent of Mt. Rainier. He lives in Seattle with his wife and three boys.

Why We Invested

There are over 100 million travelers globally who begin their travel planning online. In the US alone, $80 billion is spent annually by over 60 million consumers who plan and book leisure and business travel online. Airline and hotel bookings together make up 83% of total online travel spending. Given that only 41% of airline tickets and 25% of hotel rooms are currently booked online, there is significant room for growth in the online market.  

 

Yapta is a disruptive solution that offers real price transparency to frequent travelers before they buy their flights, as well as refunds or credits from airlines post-purchase. Yapta delivered significant savings to the 100 million plus people who plan travel online globally.  Yapta’s trip tagging and price tracking service has the potential to disrupt entrenched online agencies such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, and travel search engines Kayak, Farecast, and SideStep.

 

Yapta continues to refine its innovative tracking and alert service that helps frequent business and leisure travelers optimize the value of their online travel planning. Since its launch in May 2007, Yapta has alerted hundreds of thousands of travelers to more than $66 million in potential airfare savings. It was named one of the “Best 50 Websites in 2007” by Time.com, named by AlwaysOn as a “top 250 private firms to watch” in 2008 and won the “2008 Consumer Product of the Year” award from the Washington Technology Industry Association. The new website was released in summer 2008 which will allow travelers to plan their trips directly from the Yapta site.