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Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

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Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#111

Post by czr80 »

glesica wrote: post #107
starship wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, it never ceases to amaze me how controversial pricing discrimination is. Especially since most people have taken Econ 101: pricing discrimination eliminates dead-weight loss, which should be a good thing right? Nope, instant controversy.

Guy who has taken Econ 101 here. Price discrimination doesn't eliminate dead-weight loss (it really has nothing to do with dead-weight loss), it just converts consumer surplus into producer surplus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination#Types_of_...

Actually, it does both - capturing consumer surplus for buyers who pay more than the average and eliminating deadweight loss for buyers who pay less than the average.

[Technical note: By "average" I really mean the optimal price if the producer is only allowed to set a single price point. But let's not quibble.]

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#112

Post by jerednel »

joshmlewis wrote: post #49

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.…

It probably violates the contract that the OTA has with Marriott. Hotel chains typically offer a best rate guarantee that states that you cannot find a lower rate anywhere else - and if you do, they'll match it and provide an additional benefit (free night, $50 amex).

OTA's eat into margins of the hotels because they get a good size c omission from the bookings - no hotel chain would negotiate a contract that let an OTA undercut them.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#113

Post by RegEx »

adbge wrote: post #47
RegEx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by consensus and executive decree Man, some people around here really love the 'sound' of their own text.

Hell, I love the sound of his text.

And there's always someone there to appreciate the pretentiousness.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#114

Post by lmm »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #104
rmc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much harder, but possible. You could look at browser features in JS and compare them to what's known for browsers to do and guess the browser. Some browsers are highly likely to be certain ODs. It's highly highly likely that they are just looking at user agent strings.

Well, the code to look at JS features must be written in JS itself (adding features to an array, sending them over JSON, redirecting to a new page, etc.). I'll pull out my Dev Console and fuck with it (set a breakpoint and change that part of the code), and make them think I'm using lynx instead of Safari. So, I don't think you can ever really know what browser your users use.

Sure. And even if you could, you couldn't really know whether they like cheap hotels based on it. The question is whether you can get a signal that's statistically well correlated enough to be useful.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#115

Post by mratzloff »

willvarfar wrote: post #94
mratzloff wrote: post #71

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. 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 av…

This can happen if someone else buys that cheap seat before you complete your booking. I've often tried to coordinate buying tickets with others online and we can all be chatting on the phone as we're all looking at our own computer screens and we all read off different prices. Well, flight pricing is never simple any which way anyway.

Right, but my point was that no one had bought those tickets--because there were so few seats it was apparent it was the same flight with the same seats available.

The hotel also increased by a significant amount.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#116

Post by mratzloff »

derda wrote: post #80
mratzloff wrote: post #71

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. 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 av…

It is also possible, that they show you a cached price first and one step before the confirmation they check back with the airline if they price really is the same. In your case the airline might have increased the fare, for whatever reason, shortly before you started your booking process.

That's definitely possible. I just have a hard time giving any company involved (airline or aggregator) the benefit of the doubt...

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#117

Post by doc4t »

mratzloff wrote: post #71

It wouldn't surprise me. I've suspected for years that they do differential pricing, but I got confirmation a few days ago. 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 av…

1. Airline ticket prices can change several times within the same hour.

2. Once you have done a booking search many companies store this information in a cookie (or otherwise) to prevent you from seeing cheaper prices on subsequent searches. Try deleting your cookies next time...it usually works for me. Also I never log in to my account until I know exactly what I want.

Re: Orbitz shows costlier hotel options to Mac users

#120

Post by yo-mf »

gjm11 wrote: post #99
starship wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, it never ceases to amaze me how controversial pricing discrimination is. Especially since most people have taken Econ 101: pricing discrimination eliminates dead-weight loss, which should be a good thing right? Nope, instant controversy.

> most people have taken Econ 101 Er. Um. No, most people have not taken Econ 101. Most graduates have not taken Econ 101. Most graduates in quantitative disciplines have not taken Econ 101. Most people with economics degrees have taken Econ 101. A modest number of other people have. Some more have learned the basic concepts by means other than taking Econ 101. These are probably not the people complaining about pric…

And everyone has taken Psych 101...
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