<p>“Orbitz has found that Apple users spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel site is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, options than Windows visitors see.”</p>
<p>Wow! talk about a slimy way to use tracking data to make an extra buck!
I’m sure this will quickly come back and bite Orbitz in the rear end, big time! Wouldn’t be surprised if Apple bans Orbitz’s apps from the app store…</p>
<p>Know your audience! Aren’t the Apple fanboys usually so happy to spend more for comparable products that they can’t stop gloating about their superiority.</p>
<p>Seems Orbitz is borrowing a page from the Cupertino bible. :)</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s much different than placing ads in magazines intended for a well heeled audience. You can still sort the results by price, stars or location , can’t you?
Orbitz isn’t charging more for the same room, they are just guessing (rightly) that I would prefer a room that is nicer as opposed to one that is bare bones.</p>
<p>Haha that’s pretty much true! But yeah, interesting find, I wonder why that is? Or how they do it considering I would think a site like Orbitz would lay every option out for the customer…</p>
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<p>That’s very interesting and I never thought about it that way… Although I thought the popular conception is that Apple charges too much for the quality of their products, so what the consumer is paying for is the brand? I guess Apple users just tend to pay more money expecting better results, and therefore are willing to spend a little extra for a nicer hotel room. Orbitz has obviously figured this out.</p>
<p>That’s the way I thought of it immediately. If Mac OS X users generally prefer pricier hotels, then display them first so that they don’t have to look through the ones that they aren’t interested in. It’s better for everyone involved.</p>
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<p>Most people can’t afford Macs so the popular conception may be that Apple charges too much. However people that buy Macs obviously disagree. Perhaps they want a feature set in a product where they don’t consider the costs as charging too much.</p>
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<p>Apple has a lot of customers. I’m sure that customers have wildly varying reasons as
to why they buy Apple computer products. I personally have technical reasons as to
why I prefer Mac OS X - I work in a Linux shop and working with an Unixy operating
system is easier for me but I don’t care to do the maintenance work on Linux.</p>
<p>On a related note, I noticed that reserving hotels in Spain was cheaper on some web sites, if I did it in Spanish, than when I did it in English. I don’t speak Spanish, but after looking at a dozen web sites, it was easy to pick up on the basics.</p>
<p>We have used hotwire for years, and used in conjunction with betterbidding.com can pretty much pinpoint the hotel(s). Noticed a few years back that using different computers from different locations (daughter in NM, son in NJ, son in MD, mom in FL, me in NC) we would get different prices on the exact same hotels (id by ammentities, location, star rating). Price could vary by as much as $25 per day. And some were not available to everyone. So when looking for a hotel will use whichever one pops up cheaper. Probably been 4+ years we have had to do this.</p>
<p>And once I login to my account the price can be different again. Of course this takes into consideration that prices can change hour by hour. So I can see orbitz doing this.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is slimy. It simply reflects consumer choices. There was a piece in the NYT about how Target uses customers’ buying habits to do something similar: <a href=“How Companies Learn Your Secrets - The New York Times”>How Companies Learn Your Secrets - The New York Times; It’s not as if a budget-minded Mac user couldn’t actually find cheap hotels online. (It might, however, explain why Orbitz’s suggestions to me are always wildly off the mark! College student using Mac because that’s the platform that has the software I need.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, a few years ago in Singapore, there was an uproar about a home appliances retailer who put ads in the English and Malay-language newspapers that were virtually identical, except for the fact that the English ad had the overall price while the Malay ad had the installment price. It is a known fact in Singapore that families that speak English at home tend to be middle- or upper-class; it is also a known fact that Malay families are overrepresented among lower-income families. That does strike me as slimy, although I can’t articulate precisely how (encouraging low-income families to buy things on credit they may not be able to afford? doesn’t work very well, as the world has noticed…). The scenario that toledo and romanigypsies mention also strikes me as slimy.</p>
<p>First, this was a test, not the usual way they do business. Not that it matters, because …
Second, they merely showed hotels in a different order. The user could still sort by price, etc. They did NOT show the same hotels with higher prices. </p>
<p>There was no rip off. They were doing a fairly standard market test. The reporting about this has been terrible.</p>
<p>I do not see anything slimy about it - it is targeted marketing similar to ads on CC - if I browse Target dot com, I get ads with toothpaste and such, if I peek at Neiman’s, I get Louboutins all over the screen, based on my current cookies.</p>
<p>Speaking of Target… This I did find creepy:</p>
<p>There has also been some conversation about travel sites using cookies that ensures that lower airfares will not pop up on subsequent searches. The recommendation was to clear cookies prior to repeat searches.</p>
<p>That story bothers me so freaking much. They were COUPONS. I get coupons for random crap all the time. It makes zero sense that someone would call the store to yell about coupons. It’s either fake or the dad’s a super paranoid control freak. And if you think coupons are going to encourage your D to get pregnant, Target is not your biggest problem.</p>
<p>We had a former nanny somehow get on a mailing list for baby stuff, including formula. She was 20 at the time. Neither of us could figure out how that happened, but it was always worth a laugh when the mail came.</p>
<p>Bunsen, that reminds me of when my D started getting samples of diapers and formula when she was about 17-18. ( not from Target)Neither of us understood why she was getting them, incidentally since I had both my kids at a hospital that didn’t make that news public, i didn’t get any samples or coupons:(.</p>
<p>That is also usually true in Mexico, if you look for package deals priced in Pesos. On the other hand, I have found that you can get the best prices on Expedia, especially if you can get a package with a “local flight.” Fwiw, you usually can beat the local offers for flights IN Europe when comparing offers in the US. It seems that the carriers and hotels might make provisions for the cheaper dollar. On a recent trip, I got RT flights between Brussels and Barcelona PLUS two nights in a luxurious beachfront hotel for less than 300 dollars. It was less than the locally available hotel cost!</p>
<p>This is also true for car rentals, but the trick there is to scout for the best corporate discounts AND prepay in dollars. </p>
<p>As usual, it pays to compare various sites as prices vary according to the high or low seasons.</p>