Orbitz syndicates travel deals

Orbitz officially launched on Tuesday a new service that uses Web syndication technology to deliver daily information about travel deals, including air fare from 30 cities.

The service uses real simple syndication (RSS), a popular tool for delivering headlines and information updates to Web users on Web sites like Yahoo and Google or special RSS-reader applications.

Orbitz, which began publicly testing the service a month ago, claims it is the first major travel booking site to tap RSS to deliver travel information, but it expects rival Travelocity to follow suit. As part of the new service, Orbitz lets consumers have travel updates sent directly to their My Yahoo personalized Web pages. The company expects to begin delivering hourly updates later this year.