{"id":23153,"date":"2012-06-27T19:19:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T00:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orbitz.com\/blog\/?p=23153"},"modified":"2016-12-15T03:50:03","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T09:50:03","slug":"letter-orbitz-ceo-barney-harford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orbitz.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/letter-orbitz-ceo-barney-harford\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to our customers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_23155\" style=\"width: 232px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.orbitz.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-23155\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-23155\" title=\"Barney Harford BW #1\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.orbitz.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Barney-Harford-BW-1-222x300.jpg\" width=\"222\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-23155\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Orbitz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>\u00a0By Barney Harford, CEO, Orbitz Worldwide<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On Monday night the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> published an article talking about some of the things we\u2019re doing at Orbitz to make the hotels we show to customers as relevant as possible. \u00a0The article focused on just one of many different factors we use to help make the best possible hotel recommendations to our customers\u2014the differing hotel preferences of Mac and PC users.\u00a0\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We know how overwhelming it can be to have to choose from hundreds of hotel options.\u00a0 We\u2019re focused on helping our customers find the best deals on the most relevant hotels.\u00a0 Every day customers conduct millions of searches on our websites.\u00a0 We\u2019ve observed that Mac users are more likely to book 4 or 5 star hotels, and that families traveling with kids often book different hotels than adults traveling without kids. \u00a0These are just two examples of the many insights we consider as we work to improve our hotel recommendation algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately the WSJ chose initially to hide the full story behind a subscription pay wall, so many readers and bloggers were initially reacting to an attention-grabbing yet confusing headline and a snippet of the story that didn\u2019t include the most important points about what we\u2019re doing.\u00a0 In particular the key quote \u201cOrbitz executives\u2026 said the company isn&#8217;t showing the same room to different users at different prices\u201d was hidden from non-subscribers because the WSJ required readers to pay in order to read the full article.<\/p>\n<p>Rest assured, we do not charge Mac users more than PC users for the same hotel.\u00a0 And we don\u2019t limit the choices available to any of our customers.<\/p>\n<p>At Orbitz we\u2019re passionate about using technology to dramatically improve the experience of searching and booking travel. \u00a0We\u2019re dedicated to making it easier for you, our customers, to book better trips. \u00a0We thank you for the trust you place in us each time you travel.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Barney Harford<\/strong><br \/>\nCEO, Orbitz Worldwide<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/pixel.newscred.com\/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT04MGYwNTdhMWNkN2E5MGJkYTYwZWNhZWQ5MGRlMWMwNA==\" alt=\"\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" class=\"nc_pixel\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0By Barney Harford, CEO, Orbitz Worldwide On Monday night the Wall Street Journal published an article talking about some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":23155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hotels"],"acf":{"api_active":null,"api_title":null,"api_excerpt":null,"api_featured_image":null,"api_lob":null},"posts_api_cpm_point":"","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Letter to our customers | Orbitz<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.orbitz.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/letter-orbitz-ceo-barney-harford\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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