Mac User? Orbitz Makes You Pay Up

Orbitz has found that Mac users drop about 30% more per night on hotels than PC users, so now the travel website is ever-so-helpfully directing Mac users to nicer hotels, reports the Wall Street Journal. Even when Orbitz sends Mac users to the same hotel, it often suggests fancier options. Orbitz noticed Mac users' pricier preferences last October and soon began working that into its mix of data, which also includes referring sites and user location. "It's clever," says one Mac user. But "as long as there's an option to sort by price, I'm fine with it."

It's the kind of data mining that's growing ever more common, and Orbitz has been particularly aggressive about it, even creating a new statistical analysis team with former eBay and Google employees. "That's incredible, but I wouldn't want to miss out on PC users," says the president of a boutique hotel on Miami Beach that has been featured on Macs. Spokesmen for Expedia, Priceline, and Travelocity say they don't use operating systems to make hotel suggestions, but with Mac households earning $24,000 more a year, other retailers are paying attention. (More Orbitz stories.)