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Orbitz: Fares
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Orbitz detractors say this claim is false. "With all due respect, that is just not true," says Jim Marsicano, executive VP of sales and service at Travelocity. He doubts that "a benevolent benefactor is going to be offering the lowest fares," when the information-provider is ... a carrier competing for the passenger's business.
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The Orbitz edge: Its airline partners have agreed never to offer lower fares to competing sites and to sometimes offer the best deals exclusively through Orbitz. In theory, that would mean that no competitor could beat Orbitz - but in the convoluted world of airline fares, theories sometimes work as well as yesterday’s boarding pass.
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¿ Hotel booking isn't full-featured: Beyond Orbitz's domestic air search features, the site is inconsistent. The rental car tool displays prices on a matrix similar to the air fare grid, a nice touch. But the hotel service lags behind. Unlike Expedia, which has several sorting criteria such as star rankings (1 to 5), Orbitz simply shows all its hotels for a particular city.
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In some cases, Orbitz members offer lower fares on a competing site. How is that possible? Industry experts see a variety of explanations. For example, some sites may have access to ticket inventory that is sold through consolidators - essentially, tickets that are sold in bulk - which may be priced even lower than the ones offered directly by Orbitz members to the Orbitz site.
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To capitalize on the gap in Orbitz's selection, Travelocity and Expedia have added opaque fares. They've ... stepped up efforts to offer other exclusive low fares that they can negotiate with carriers, in return for prime advertising on their sites.
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"Kayak-SideStep competitors include Yahoo's FareChase, Mobissimo, Farecast and then, of course, the range of more traditional travel sites such as Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity. It's a fiercely competitive, if lucrative, online segment. Kayak-SideStep has a way to go to catch these more traditional sites, which have more established brands and many more users."
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