Orbitz CEO Barney Hartford's interview on big data and how it helped his firm

Orbitz CEO Barney Harford’s recent interview with the travel technology website Tnooz sheds a bit of light on the possibilities. The company’s Hadoop database, named EFX, is currently analyzing 750 terabytes of unstructured data that Orbitz has collected. The data includes details on every aspect of how consumers plan trips on the site, including “everything they like or dislike about landing pages, hotel photos, maps and the checkout process.”

After the data is run through EFX, Orbitz can determine which landing pages are most likely to convert to hotel bookings based on the specific pay-per-click leads that directed users to the page. This allows Orbitz to develop a “Recommended Hotels” path that shows users the hotels they are most likely to book, depending on how they arrived at the site. Harford said Orbitz would start testing these personalized hotel sorts this quarter.

Orbitz has also determined that Mac users on average spend $20 more a night on their hotel than PC users. Based on this data, the company eventually will unveil targeted hotel sorts based on a user’s operating system, allowing Orbitz to provide a more personalized customer experience and likely increase revenue by showing users the hotels they are most interested in booking.

Such applications of big data analysis have significant potential to impact the sales of online retailers. But big data analysis can have market research implications for companies that sell in bricks-and-mortar stores as well. For instance, the Internet personalization company Hunch was able to create detailed profiles of Mac and PC users based on the data it collects. Such profiles could be used to develop more personalized marketing initiatives for specific products’ target markets, whether a company is selling sports cars or razor blades.

As consumers book more trips through Orbitz, the company collects more data, adding to its ability to personalize the user experience. Harford told Tnooz that Orbitz should have at least 3,000 terabytes of consumer trip-planning data by 2013.