Mac users just love to pay more, says Orbitz
Summary: Mac users will pay $20 to $30 a night more on hotels than PC users, says Orbitz, a travel site that'll annoy the Apple army.
Apple customers are known to pay a premium for their Macs, strong design and integrated software. Apparently, Mac users will also shell out more for hotel rooms too.
According to the Wall Street Journal, travel site Orbitz has been able to segment its audience in Apple and Windows camps. The upshot: Mac users will pay $20 to $30 a night more on hotels than PC users. Mac users will also pay for better rooms.
The Journal noted:
The sort of targeting undertaken by Orbitz is likely to become more commonplace as online retailers scramble to identify new ways in which people's browsing data can be used to boost online sales.
From an analytics perspective, targeting by operating system and pricing accordingly may not be such a bad idea. The bonehead move of the century is Orbitz yapping about it. Orbitz did note that pricing by OS is just an experiment.
Rest assured that Mac users will refrain from using Orbitz en masse now. For what it's worth, Expedia and Priceline said they don't target by OS. What else would you say as Orbitz prepares to take some serious heat from Apple fans.
The remaining question from the Orbitz tale is this: If Mac users will pay $120 for a room that a Windows customer would get for $100 what would a Linux user pay? Correction: Orbitz doesn't charge extra for Mac users, but has found that they will spend more on higher end hotels.
Update: Orbitz CEO Barney Harford outlined what Orbitz is doing in a USA Today blog post in May. Harford responded to the hubbub in a statement:
Nonsense that we'd charge Mac users more for the same hotel, which is unfortunately the incorrect impression that many readers seem to be drawing from this article's "subscriber content preview."
However, just as Mac users are willing to pay more for higher end computers, at Orbitz we've seen that Mac users are 40% more likely to book 4 or 5 star hotels as compared to PC users, and that just one of many factors that determine which hotels to recommend a given customer as part of our efforts to show customers the most relevant hotels possible.
Unfortunately WSJ editors have chosen to hide the full story behind their pay wall, so most of the world is reacting to a confusing headline, while the key point---he company isn't showing the same room to different users at different prices---is hidden because... the WSJ is steering users to pay more to be able to read the full article and understand what is actually happening.Google glasses
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
The Linux user
Party at your place?
it's coming along!
We camp
Truth be told I have never paid under 120 (140 more like it) for a hotel per night. Maybe it is just the places where I am going of course...
$6
Now this should be illegal
With a site like that it is one thing to charge based on time of year and how many free rooms/tickets are available to but to charge more because a person used a certain OS or browser is just stupid and should be illegal.
Mac users aren't being charged more for the same rooms
"Orbitz noted that it was is not showing different prices for the same room to different users, but was presenting pricier hotels more prominently to Mac users than those using Windows." (http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/25/orbitz-presenting-more-expensive-hotels-to-mac-users/)
Ok that is not as bad
It's even more than that. Orbitz is doing this because
exactly!
err no.
Poppycock
Bristol cars is a classic example, the owner used to meet prospective customers, if he liked you he would tell you which model you could buy, if he didn't like you, you couldn't buy a car, no matter how much money you had.
That said, it is a stupid move on Orbitz part, as Larry said.
Certain classes of produce have to be cleary marked, but an e-Shop has the advantage that the prices labels are created dynamically on the fly, when the page is generated - usually pulling the price from the databasse.
In this case, however, it seems that they just use a different sort order for Mac users, the prices remain the same, but the order is different.
The article is a partial lie.
RE: The Article is a partial lie
Agree, BUT...
Speaking of that...
Larry Dignan! DOH! How could you be so BONE HEADED!! It was quite plain, from the beginning, that users of Macs were being presented BETTER ROOMS FIRST, and not simply being charged more for the same rooms!! How in the hell did you make such a dumb mistake!!
I read about this same story on CNN Tuesday, but never did I come up with the wildly wrong impression you did!
And you even wrote "From an analytics perspective, targeting by operating system and pricing accordingly may not be such a bad idea." Seriously!?
And then you followed THAT with "The bonehead move of the century is Orbitz yapping about it." Wow, oh WOW the irony!
(For the sake of clarity, I'm talking about the "bonehead" being YOURS, and the fact that the "yapping" is, also, YOURS!)
not necesssarily!
MAC users pay more
Perhaps you can't afford/justify the WSJ subscription?
Sorry it that WSJ paywall is a bit steep for your pay grade. No, this article doesn't report anything that an unbiased observer wouldn't already know: in contrast to Mac users, many PC users want the least price even if it means grody shag carpets, lumpy beds, lousy amenities. Just as they think that all trackpads are created equal, all 13" laptop screens display color equally accurately, etc., despite the manufacturers being unable to get more than bottom dollar for them.
Didn't read the Wall Streen Journal
So basically this is another case of ZDNet leaving out important information to make it look like the world is Anti-Apple.
Anti-Apple???? Huh?
The article in no way says anything about "the world". It says something about Apple users as contrasted with Windows users (whether you agree with what it says is a whole notha thang. _Keb Mo)