Mac Users May Get Charged More Money to Travel

If you’re willing to pay more money for a high end, trendy brand computer, what else are you willing to pay more for?

Orbitz says hotel rooms.

According to a WSJ article, Orbitz says that Mac users pay roughly 30% more for hotel bookings than PC users, which averages out to be $20 to $30 more per night. They also say that Mac users are 40% more likely to book four or five star hotels. Making use of this data, Orbitz has begun showing Mac users more expensive accommodation options than they do PC users.

As claimed by Orbitz CEO Barney Harford:

However, just as Mac users are willing to pay more for higher end computers, at Orbitz we’ve seen that Mac users are 40% more likely to book 4 or 5 star hotels as compared to PC users, and that just one of many factors that determine which hotels to recommend a given customer as part of our efforts to show customers the most relevant hotels possible.

So far, it’s been cited that Orbitz’s biggest competitors have not yet started using their user’s computer type as a metric in their pricing algorithms, but I would not doubt that they may start doing so in the future given the stats:

“Apple users already stand out as big spenders,” the WSJ article continued. People shopping on iPads have a tendency to place larger orders than those using laptops or desktops, Shop.org admitted. Apple brand smartphone users also tend to outspend shoppers on Androids or BlackBerrys, “accounting for half of all mobile purchases.”

In the virtual world everyone is a demographic, everyone is ranked and filed, everyone is marketed to in accordance to where they’ve shown themselves to stand socially, politically, and economically. If you match the demographic that you’re thrust into, great; if not, you’re going to find yourself in a compromising position when it comes to browsing the internet. Apple product users tend to be bigger online spenders than users on other brand devices, so if don’t want to be put into this category and get shown higher priced options, don’t shop or book hotels, flights etc . . .on a Mac or any other Apple product.

In this age of predictive analytics it is my impression that many other large online retailers and travel industry brokers are going to get into the act and try to suck as much money out of the “deeper pockets” that Apple users have statistically been shown to have. Why wouldn’t they? This is the cost of status in the digital era: if you show that you can spend money luxuriously (such as buying a higher priced brand computer or booking higher priced hotel rooms) you may soon be baited with more expensive options on every corner of the internet.

For extreme budget travelers, this is yet another reason to not travel with a Mac.