Orbitz
 

Am I the only one, or does Orbitz seem broken to others as well? One is supposed to have the ability to search on airport 25/50/100 miles from selected airport, but that only seems to be producing results for the selected airport. I was trying fares from SNA+50 and I know LAX should have showed up with lower fares. Then on the hotel part, if you do a search by name or chain, it still produces the exact same results as without inputting a chain/name. I put in Marriott, Hilton and SPG, but it kept bringing up Days Inn, Travelodge, as results closest to the place where I was looking for. And a Marriott or SPG hotel was 2 pages away. I used to heavily rely on Orbitz to find hotels and now this does not seem to be as efficient. Maybe Orbitz realized that people like me were using it just to find fares/hotels and then booking them elsewhere.

I've had similar experiences with Orbitz doing a southern California airport search. I think it has something to do with Sabre (the underlying engine).

Try ONT with 100 miles. I think that gets SNA, BUR, LGB, LAX, and PSP, but not SAN (which is what I usually want).

You can also try QLA, which should do just the four metro airporst (the above minus PSP), but it doesn't work with all interfaces, and can also produce inconsistent results.

In the same vein, NYC should pull EWR, LGA, and JFK, but not HPN or ISP.

More that don't exist but should:
CHI for ORD and MDW
BAY for SFO, OAK, SJC
WSH for IAD, DCA, BWI
YZZ for YYZ, YTZ

WAS, PAR, and LON all work as well...

When I tried to make an itinerary to Cincinnati recently, with the 100 mile option, it would give me itineraries that ARRIVED at Lexington, KY, and DEPARTED from Cincinnati. For some reason it wouldn't give me itineraries that arrived and departed from the same airport. When I specifically set Lexington as my destination it came up with cheaper itineraries to and from that airport.

Ed

As far as the hotel part of your question I use this feature all the time (looking for all hilton properties) and it works great.
I did notice the hotels they include in the chosen geographic location can sometimes leave me scratching my head.

But have you tried it recently? I noticed this started happening yesterday.

[This message has been edited by zakami (edited 10-30-2002).]

Dear Orbitz Member,

Thank you for contacting Orbitz.

We are aware of this and are currently working on fixing our search
options. Please check back on the site in the future.

Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to
contact us.

Sincerely,

Bryan
Orbitz Customer Service
www.Orbitz.com

Most Low Fares Made Easy

i use orbitz extensively but it is extremely buggy. when i write to customer care, their responses are obviously computer generated since they rarely come close to answering the question posed.

the worst is searching for hotels. you cannot get rates for the venerable Lanesborough Hotel in London (a Starwood property). i have had tough times using Orbitz's hotel search feature.