What online experience has Orbitz got?
I consider that online experience, acquired by e-tourism sites over a period of several years, is an asset which cannot be reproduced by a simple “copy, paste” operation, as Orbitz seem to have imagined. The scalability constraints that large e-tourism sites – who now get millions of visitors per month – have had to deal with, are an example of just how important this online experience is. Orbitz does not have this experience, and yet it boasts that its site will be a showcase for technological innovation. Orbitz says it going to change users’ ways of travelling. Although we cannot, for the moment, judge how innovative its future e-services will actually be, we can quite legitimately wonder whether it is not going use its visitors to beta-test the site? New e-services, a new site, new customers: a lot of time will be required to set all this up and sort out the teething troubles. Given that the race to capture e-travel customers actually began over three years ago, won’t the time that
