It is important to read the article carefully:<p>WRONG - Mac users see higher prices for same hotels than Windows users<p>RIGHT - Mac users are sometimes also shown hotels that are costlier than their windows users<p>"...so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see."
It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago.<p>I just bought tickets to Las Vegas on Friday. I got through the checkout process (choosing a flight and a hotel) and then they said there was a "problem" and kicked me back to the beginning of the process. I went through it again, choosing the exact same flights (with the same number of seats available) and the prices were 20-30% higher. The available seats were identical (I was buying for a same-day flight so there were only a handful remaining and it was easy to see that they were the same). I went ahead and bought since it at was the last minute, but I made a mental note not to ever bother coming back.<p>It's happened so frequently to me on this and other aggregators like Travelocity that it may even be intentional.<p>Perhaps they display competitive prices so they will be chosen by people who are comparison shopping (either manually or through a site like kayak.com). Then once you've asserted your willingness to buy by moving through the flight selection process they randomly restart you with higher prices on the (probably likely) belief that you have already mentally committed to Orbitz.
Another interesting one is when Capital One showed different rates by browser types by using a demographic study of wealth based on browser via <a href="http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/11/do-different-web-browsers-bring-different-demographics" rel="nofollow">http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/11/do-different-we...</a>
I also find this fascinating.<p>As someone involved in creating recommendation systems for web sites based on various user behavior signals, I can see adding a "what type of browser do they use" and "what type of OS do they use" intelligence in the future to further segment users.<p>Mac ownership must be a proxy for "household income". Brilliant.
Inevitably, this will make people like me (Mac user that considers $50 a night overpriced) book through other sites. Does orbitz think I only price through them? Most people I know price at least a half dozen locations before deciding, so as long as everyone doesn't jack prices for Mac users, Mac user's business will naturally migrate to whomever doesn't try to screw us.
Are they simply showing pricier offers, or are they showing the exact same offers but with the prices raised? The former is annoying but not inherently evil, but the latter would be terrible.
Another curious statistic: according to the sales numbers on <a href="http://www.humblebundle.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.humblebundle.com/</a>, Linux users on average pay more ($12.50) for the choose-your-price bundle than Mac ($9.99) or Windows ($7.98) users.
It's not like someone at Orbitz sat down, rubbed his/her hands with glee and said with an evil laugh, "ha! I will rip those Mac users off!"<p>In all likelihood, someone used the browser type as a feature in their model. It so happens that Mac users are (or were) younger, slightly more financially successful and like to splurge a little (e.g., the Mac itself, when comparable Windows laptops are significantly cheaper). Hence the model learned that it can show more expensive hotels to users with that specific browser type.
Full Article -<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230445860457748...</a>
Not that familiar with most of the hotel examples shown but, for Las Vegas at least, both the hotel examples shown are pretty low-end Strip Casinos. (i.e., at least this example isn't about significantly different classes of properties)
As a Mac user I hate this but I do think you should (on applications at least) use different models for each platform. Angry Birds monetizes differently on Android and iOS. This isn't a justification for Orbitz' behaviour though.
"I don't understand the Orbitz debacle.<p>First, they're not charging Mac users more than Windows users for the same hotels / services. All users, regardless of OS, have access to the same set of options at the same prices. This is ad targeting, not price manipulation; they're (essentially) showing Mac users different advertisements -- for higher-priced options. You're free to not click on the ad; if Orbitz chose wrong, they're losing money (by wasting ad space on their page)."<p>Rest here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/tudorb/posts/10100307597913113" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/tudorb/posts/10100307597913113</a>
I'm cofounding a startup in the travel space and our cofounder has a lot of domain expertise and according to him it's illegal to show a rate lower on Expedia than say Marriott.com. There are exceptions as always, but for the most part this is true. Now I don't know if this applies to the opposite..I guess you could just add to a price but I still would think that's fishy. Anyway, just a little tid bit of knowledge.<p>Edit: Turns out they prices weren't different, just showing pricier results first.
Amazon also shows costlier suggestions to customers who have bought costlier products before. Orbitz is doing what they can with their comparatively limited knowledge.<p>The ironic thing about this is that many airfare websites have a German version with curiously higher prices than the US version, and that Apple's computers themselves are more expensive in Europe. (Sadly I'm never sure how much of this can be explained with taxes.)