Orbitz
Web-based travel fare aggregator service
Orbitz.com is an international travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine. The website is owned by Orbitz Worldwide, Inc., a subsidiary of Expedia Group. It is headquartered in the Citigroup Center, Chicago, Illinois.
Background
The company was incorporated in 2000 and began beta testing in February next year. Orbitz.com officially launched in June 2001.
Antitrust concerns
Before, during, and two years after launching the site, the company faced antitrust criticism since its creators controlled 75% of U.S. air travel. The United States Department of Transportation saw no antitrust issues with the launch of the Orbitz website. The United States Department of Justice ruled in 2003 that Orbitz was not a cartel and that there was no evidence of price fixing.
Nielsen's Net rating division that the launch of the Orbitz website in June 2001 was the biggest e-commerce launch ever to that date.
Ownership history
In November 2003, Orbitz filed paperwork to sell shares at between $22 and $24 each in an initial public offering.
The public source identifies “Orbitz” as web-based travel fare aggregator service. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Orbitz, Web-based and travel.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Orbitz”, the useful work is to connect “web-based travel fare aggregator service” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7100114. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000, 2001 and 2003.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Orbitz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.