Using a Mac? You probably want a more expensive hotel reservation

Data mining by online merchants isn’t just so that Overstock.com can offer to sell you the same product you just bought on Amazon. It has the power to improve all of our lives! Orbitz, which makes online reservations for hotels and more, realized that Mac and Windows users have different shopping habits and adjusted accordingly.

It turns out that Mac users spend a lot more on hotels than Windows users. They usually spend between $20 and $30 more, and since the average price for a hotel room at Orbitz is around $100, that’s not a small difference. They are also much more likely to stay in a four- or five-star hotel, and even when staying in the same hotel, Mac users opt for more expensive rooms.

So Orbitz, realizing there was a clear and measurable difference, decided to show different offerings to users of different operating systems. It’s easy to tell which operating system someone is using and then provide different results depending on which operating system pops up. None of this is exactly unpredictable – Mac users have a higher household income than Windows users on average – but it’s still a bit funny and a bit scary that something so simple could be used to marketing. Of course, none of this has escaped the attention of the comics on Twitter.

WSJ