The folks over at Skift have an interesting study on mobile travel apps as a function of gender. Among the comscore data that they crunched, they found that the mobile tools for Hilton and Delta were frequented primarily by men (74% and 67% respectively) while among Online Travel Agents, Travelocity was the only tool that was gender asymmetric. Apparently, 66% of Travelocity app users are women, while other sites like Orbitz and Kayak are closer to 50/50.
What’s with the skew? Dennis Schaal, the author of the article, jokingly suggests that the Travelocity Gnome might have some better sex appeal (and The Negotiator doesn’t?) but the real influences are probably more subtle than that. It’s well known that design aspects of a website including color and functionality tend to cater to different demographics. In this case, it’s possible that Travelocity’s design is just better suited to the female aesthetic.
Either way, Travelocity has the same comscore data that we do, so the targeting is intentional. We just don’t know why.