Looking for a hotel room deal? Don't use your Mac. You may want to use your PC while browsing the site Orbitz.com. Mac users aren't being shown the best deals.
Orbitz found that Mac users generally spend more on travel and hotels. Taking this information, Orbits is experimenting and those who visit the site to find hotel deals from their Mac computer are being shown more expensive hotel options than those who use a PC. The site isn't showing Mac users the same hotel rooms at different prices than PC users, but the site presents more expensive hotels to Mac users.
Orbitz Worldwide Inc. found that Apple Inc. Mac users spend up to 30 percent more per night on hotels than those who use Windows. They also found that Mac users are 40 percent more likely to book a four or five-star hotel than PC users. When PC and Mac users stay in the same hotel, the Mac users usually opt for the pricier rooms, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Mac users are still shown the same deals as PC users, but the more luxurious offers are shown more prominently to Mac users as they're more likely to pay the higher prices for hotel stays. However, Orbitz claims that all users can rank hotel findings by price from lowest to highest, so Mac users can still find the same deals, The Wall Street Journal reported. They just have to put in a bit more effort.
The WSJ also noted that Orbitz is on to something in their findings. According to Forrester Research, the average household income for adult owners of Mac computers is $98,560, while the average adult PC owners make an average of $74,452 per household.
In addition to Orbitz.com, Orbitz Worldwide Inc. owns other travel sites, including CheapTickets, ebookers, HotelClub and RatesToGo. These sites could incorporate similar techniques in which Mac users see the higher priced hotel rooms first.
Orbitz's experiment may be deceiving or unfair to Mac users, but using this income information and looking at the spending habits of Mac users, it makes sense from a business perspective.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
