Put That Mac Book Down, Unless You Want To Pay More For Your Hotel Room

UPDATE, 9:03pm: HotelChatter received a response from Orbitz CEO Barney Harford, stating that while Orbitz is indeed trying to provide more "relevant" hotels to its customers, it would never charge Mac users more money for the same hotel room. This was stated in our original post, but we thought we should clarify that part.

More bad news�for people who use computers and stay at hotels. Oh wait, that's pretty much all of us.

This time, the sword falls on Mac users specifically�who, according to a study by Orbitz, are statistically more likely to stay at pricier hotels than PC users, or at least a pricier room inside a hotel. Huh.

We always associated fancier, state-of-the-art tech amenities (iPads, Chromebooks, Mac Minis) with a fancier, more state-of-the-art hotels. But to make that decision for people based on what computer they're using to book a hotel room? Seems a little shady.

What's happening, according to the Wall Street Journal, is that Orbitz is remembering which people book rooms on Mac computers, and then showing them different�slightly more expensive�hotel options compared to PC users.

While Mac users don't necessarily get shown higher rates on the same room, Orbitz is essentially creating two markets of online hotel bookers, Mac-ers and PC-ers.

This reminds us a little of the Parks & Recreation episode where Ron Swanson first hears about internet cookies, and freaks out because the internet is storing information about him.

Except in this instance, instead of throwing our MacBook in the dumpster (like Ron does), we'll probably leave it on the desk, and just resort to old-fashioned phone calling to book our hotel rooms.

The article explains:

"Orbitz found Mac users on average spend $20 to $30 more a night on hotels than their PC counterparts, a significant margin given the site's average nightly hotel booking is around $100, chief scientist Wai Gen Yee said.
Mac users are 40 percent more likely to book a four or five-star hotel than PC users, Yee said, and when Mac and PC users book the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms."

Should Orbitz be allowed to try to predict your tastes based on what type of computer you use (and God knows what other information)? Sound off below!

[Photo: HotelChatter]

Comments (2)

Return to » Put That Mac Book Down, Unless You Want To Pay More For Your Hotel Room

Seems to be lots of confusion and misunderstanding about this WSJ story. A misleading headline and the selective placement of the WSJ paywall cuts off the story and leads people to jump to conclusions. If you carefully read the WSJ, it never says Orbitz charges Mac users more. Because we do not. This story grew out of our observation that Mac users are 40% more likely to book 4-5 star hotels as compared to PC users. We make recommendations about hotels along a number of variables, i.e., traveling with or without children. Our recommendation module has extremely high levels of consumer engagement, indicating that it's a feature that our users really appreciate. Our CEO shared a broader discussion on this topic with USA Today readers in May. Please see his blog post at <a href="http://usat.ly/JWLTzz">http://usat.ly/JWLTzz</a>

Just like the airlines would not charge their frequent flyers more for flights.

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