MyTab: Collaborative Cash Saving and Gifting for Travel

myTab.co launched earlier this year and the site has been totally revamped. The new service addresses the need to save cash and to find the best fare prices more efficiently.

All travel sites roughly offer the same deals and the amount of time spent online to find them usually does not worth the effort.  MyTab’s  goal is to bring more loyalty in the travel industry by driving people to save money, select a destination well in advance, promote cash gifting by friends and family and by offering an automated deal search with its “Match my Cash” feature.

How it works

Let’s say that I would like to take a birthday trip to Paris. I set up the trip in MyTab and invite two Facebook friends to the trip to share the planning responsibility. Then we post it on Facebook and Twitter, so our friends can see where we plan to go and we all start saving cash on our individual MyTab accounts, using PayPal for transfer. Then I shout on Facebook and Twitter “Hey, for this year’s birthday gift, can you put it on myTab please, I’ll use it for my Paris trip”.

I can also search and book travel, redeem my funds towards the trip within myTab (powered by Expedia) or I can choose “Match myCash” feature. When I select Match myCash, myTab automatically matches the money I saved my destination and dates with a deal (within 15% of my fund). This is a great feature that will certainly save a lot of time to a lot of people.

Then the trip itinerary is sent via email to my traveling friends and they can book the same flight using myTab. In case there is some cash left, I can use it on myTab for the next trip, gift it to a friend to use it on myTab or donate to a myTab featured eco charity.

Basically the site acts like an online gift card, except that you do not need to go to a store to get your gift, there is no expiration date, you cannot lose it and you have selected your gift upfront.  According to a 2007 Consumers Union report, in 2007, $8 billion in gift cards went unredeemed and 27% of 2006 Gift Cards were still unused a year later.

Features include, according to MyTab:

• Plan a trip – individually or with Facebook friends
• View and comment on Facebook friends trips
• Set reminders – individually or with your traveling Facebook friends
• Request cash for your occasion – this posts to your Facebook wall and Twitter feed
• Save travel cash – through PayPal (user or credit card guest)
• Gift friends travel cash – from your existing myTab funds or instantly through PayPal (user or credit card guest). This can be Facebook friends or by username i.e. myTab.co/jane
• Book a flight or flight+hotel on myTab, redeeming funds
• View a list of friends and eco charities you gifted

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Breaking, Shopping, Web
Tags: shopping, travel