Thursday, January 12, 2006

RSS Feeds Flying Out Of Orbitz

The online travel site has added syndicated feeds to its services, allowing users to subscribe to a limited number of deals for airfare, hotels, or vacation packages for select destinations.

My first thought on trying out the RSS feeds on Orbitz was "where's the customization?"

Orbitz currently offers a pre-selected group of RSS feeds for users. They include Top Orbitz Deals for Flight Deals, Hotel Promotions, Car Deals, Cruise Vacations, and Vacation Packages. Deals for hotels and vacation packages for eleven major travel destinations, and specific airfare deals from 33 cities have dedicated feeds.

Users can either subscribe to the XM feed, or click the My Yahoo chiclet to add the feed to their Yahoo account. While this is obviously a first effort, it's also pretty limited. Leaving Orlando out of the feeds for Hotel or Vacation deals looks like a glaring omission, considering Disney's resurgence as a travel destination.

Another good option would be one to create a RSS feed from a given search, as Google News enables users to do. Scranton, PA, is a nice enough place, but how many subscribers to the Hotel Deals feed will ever go there?

1 comment:

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