Orbitz Worldwide is an Internet travel company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

Through its primary web site Orbitz.com, Orbitz Worldwide enables travelers to research, plan and book a broad range of travel products. Orbitz Worldwide is a publicly-traded company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: OWW), following its initial public offering (IPO) in July 2007. Orbitz Worldwide's largest investor is Travelport, one of the world's largest networks of travel brands, content and service offerings.

Originally established through a partnership of major airlines, and subsequently owned by various entities, Orbitz.com – the flagship brand of Orbitz Worldwide – has been in operation since 2001.

Other Orbitz Worldwide online travel companies include: CheapTickets® (www.cheaptickets.com) and the Away Network (www.away.com) in the Americas; ebookers® (www.ebookers.com) in Europe; and HotelClub (www.hotelclub.com) and RatestoGo (www.ratestogo.com), based in Asia Pacific with operations globally. Orbitz Worldwide also owns and operates a corporate travel company, Orbitz for Business.

Beginnings

Orbitz was the airline industry's response to the rise of online travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity, as well as a solution to the continued increase in Global Distribution System GDS fees. Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, and United Airlines, subsequently joined by American Airlines, invested a combined $145 million to start the project in November 1999. It was code-named T2 — some claimed, meaning "Travelocity Terminator" – but adopted the brand name Orbitz when it commenced corporate operations as DUNC, LLC (the initials of its first four founding airlines) in February 2000. The company began Beta testing early the next year, and Orbitz.com officially launched in June 2001.Fact: date=February 2007

Anti-trust concerns

Even before the site began operating, the company faced intense antitrust scrutiny – because five of the six oligopolist "major" airlines were collaborating on the project. Collectively, they controlled 80 percent of the US air travel market. Several consumer organizations, as well as Orbitz's primary competitors at the time (Expedia, Sabre, Travelocity, Galileo) spent significant amounts of money lobbying the United States Department of Transportation to block the project from the outset, and some 23 state attorneys general also voiced concerns due to the complaints of local competitors. When the DOT permitted the company to move ahead in April 2001, the competitive lobbying effort was switched to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Among the concerns raised were these:

• above all, the so-called Most Favored Nation provision, by which the airlines agreed not to cut deals with competing sites under more favorable terms than with Orbitz
• the airlines' agreement to release certain discount fares only to Orbitz or other entities at Orbitz low distribution cost, at the expense of its online and offline competitors
• that Computer Reservation System fee discounts extended to partner airlines would undermine competitors and damage the fledgling online travel industry
• that the airlines would coordinate efforts secretly to reduce discounts
• Orbitz was breaking out the service fee from the ticket price, not making the total price clear