The first tier, Silver, is the most basic level and applies to everyone. Orbitz offers 3 tiers of rewards with elite status benefits. When searching for hotels (more on that below), just look for the Insider Price marking. Orbitz offers discounted member pricing on certain hotels, with discounts usually around 10%, but sometimes as high as 50%. The next time you book a hotel through Orbitz while you’re logged in, you’ll have the option to apply your Orbucks balance to the purchase. In other words, if a flight costs $650, you’ll earn 6.5 Orbucks. Typically, it’s an even 1% return on airline purchases and vacation packages, and 3% back on eligible hotels (or 5% on hotels if you book through the Orbitz app). Each Orbuck is worth $1 and can be redeemed for hotel purchases with no blackout dates.Īny time you book travel, you’ll see an earning rate next to your itinerary. Each travel purchase made through the site earns Orbucks. This rewards system is relatively simple. Before booking anything through Orbitz, you should sign up for an account. Orbitz offers its own loyalty program, meaning that you can triple-dip on rewards between Orbitz Orbucks, credit card rewards, and frequent flyer miles (you generally aren’t eligible for hotel loyalty points if you book through a third party). Orbitz Rewards, Insider Pricing, and Credit Cards Be sure to check out our picks for the best credit card for vacation packages before making a purchase. Additionally, Google Flights has become a lot more capable over the past few years and makes it easy to search for and compare flights.īottom Line: These days, a better-use scenario for OTAs is vacation packages, where you can save a bit by purchasing airfare, hotel stays, and extras like rental cars or transportation all in 1 bundle. Rather than freely mixing and matching the lowest-priced one-way segments, Orbitz tries to stick with a single alliance where possible. In the above example, for instance (New York-London-Amsterdam-Berlin-New York), you could pay a lot less by just booking a series of one-way segments on Norwegian Air Shuttle and Ryanair. However, this benefit is made a little less valuable by the plethora of ultra-low-cost-carriers (LCCs) that have popped up lately. This is something that Orbitz is particularly useful for, where it can help build a single itinerary with a carrier or alliance. Not all OTAs (or even airlines) make it easy to book a multi-city trip - for example, a trip where you leave New York and start in London, fly to Amsterdam, and head to Berlin before going home. One compelling reason to use an OTA is when you’re trying to put together a more complicated itinerary, especially when you’ll need to book a few different flight segments on a few different airlines. Instead, you may have to go through the booking agent, which can cause some confusion when communicating back and forth. When you book through an online travel agency, the actual travel provider may not be able to work with you directly to come up with a solution. If there are any issues such as cancellation, overbooking, or delay, dealing directly with the airline or hotel can make solving the problem easier. When you’re booking travel for a particular hotel or flight, it often makes sense to book directly with the travel provider. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at how to use Orbitz, how it compares to other OTAs, and cases when you might want to choose them over the competition. So if you choose to use an OTA, then they can be the best option, particularly when there isn’t a specific deal for what you want being offered elsewhere. In the grand scheme of things, Orbitz offers consistency. It also features a wide range of services, letting you book flights, hotels, vacation packages, activities, cruises, rental cars, and more. What Orbitz offers is an in-house loyalty program, strong search functionality, regularly-published low prices, and occasional discounts. They each hope that by attracting business with specials, travelers will stay loyal to the platform for all of their travel booking needs. Others, like Costco Travel, offer freebies for members. With such a saturated market, many of them try to offer something unique to attract customers.įor example, Priceline offers savings through simple bookings, while Amex Travel offers cardholder perks and fantastic customer service. There are a ton of online travel agencies ( OTAs) out there, each competing hard for your business.
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