Orbitz Shows Higher Priced Hotel Rooms to Mac Users (by @calebhicks)

Marketing 101 teaches you about demographics and how to market a product or service to them. Orbitz seems to be going to their marketing roots, as they’ve decided that Mac users that pay a premium for computer hardware are more likely to pay a premium for overnight hotel stays – and they’re right.

Orbitz has been testing a feature to show higher-priced rooms to Mac users, saying that the users are 40% more likely to select a 3 or 4 star hotel than a Windows or Linux user, paying an average of $20-30 more per night for an overnight stay.

Note that Orbitz is not showing the same room with different prices, but is actually showing “nicer” rooms with higher prices by default. Users can still sort hotel rooms by price, which will update the results. But a default search sort will show costlier rooms to a Mac user than a Windows user.

Orbitz plans to continue testing with hotel reservations, as well as expand into car rentals and flight bookings. They say that a user’s operating system is only one variable in their tests, but has proven to be one that coincides with higher priced bookings.