“Orbitz Worldwide Inc. has found that people who use Apple Inc.’s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see,” Dana Mattioli reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The Orbitz effort, which is in its early stages, demonstrates how tracking people’s online activities can use even seemingly innocuous information—in this case, the fact that customers are visiting Orbitz.com from a Mac—to start predicting their tastes and spending habits. Orbitz executives confirmed that the company is experimenting with showing different hotel offers to Mac and PC visitors, but said the company isn’t showing the same room to different users at different prices. They also pointed out that users can opt to rank results by price.”

Mattioli reports, “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% more likely to book a four- or five-star hotel than PC users, Mr. Yee said, and when Mac and PC users book the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms. ‘We had the intuition, and we were able to confirm it based on the data,’ Orbitz Chief Technology Officer Roger Liew said.”

“Apple users already stand out as big spenders. Nearly half of retailers in a recent study by Forrester Research and Shop.org said users of tablets—a large majority of which are iPads—tend to place bigger online orders than users of laptops or desktops. Shoppers on Apple devices like iPhones also outspend shoppers using Android or BlackBerry devices, accounting for half of all mobile purchases, according to International Business Machines, which tracks data from retailers,” Mattioli reports. “The average household income for adult owners of Mac computers is $98,560, compared with $74,452 for a PC owner, according to Forrester. Eventually, Orbitz may start to test if Mac users have identifiable preferences for car rentals and flight bookings. ‘It would be nice to say they book more Porsches, but at this point we’re only looking at hotels,’ Mr. Yee said.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s a well-known fact that Mac users in particular and Apple product users in general are smarter and richer than Windows PC suffers and pretend iPhone/fake iPad cheapskates; just look at their computers, phones, and tablets (and check out our related articles below). We don’t need or even want to see a list of bedbug-infested fleabag motels. As long as you can choose to sort the results by price, we don’t see anything wrong with attempting to present results that might be better suited to the means and the taste – or lack thereof – of the individual user.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Fred Mertz" and "Lynn Weiler" for the heads up.]

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