Orbitz to offer lowest hotel price guarantee

www.orbitz.com

Online travel agencies such as Expedia.com and Orbitz have eliminated or significantly reduced their fees recently to encourage increasingly price-conscious consumers to book trips via their websites.

Over the last two months, the online booking sites cut fees for airline bookings through the end of the spring. New price guarantees emerged, and then some of the online travel agencies began to reduce their hotel booking fees.

A new round in the pricing wars has arrived with Orbitz announcing its plan to guarantee prices on prepaid hotel rooms booked through its website. Called the “Hotel Price Assurance” program, the Orbitz guarantee is similar to a scheme it introduced in June of 2008 to guarantee prices on airline tickets. In that program, customers are automatically reimbursed for their tickets if another customer buys the exact same ticket somewhere else at a lower price.

According to the terms of its new hotel promotion, any customer making a prepaid hotel booking will be eligible for a refund from Orbitz if another customer, booking exactly the same stay – including the room type, the number of travelers and the travel dates – buys it for a lower price. Orbitz will automatically send its customer a check for the difference in the amount.

“We really want to make sure we are establishing ourselves as the place to book hotels,” said Orbitz president and chief executive, Barney Harford.

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www.orbitz.com