Orbitz offers beach oil spill refund and update widget

For consumers concerned that their beachside hotel vacation along the Florida Gulf Coast may turn into a gunky mess, Orbitz is offering a refund for their hotel stay if the pristine sands turn into a tar-ball fiasco.

Customers who book a hotel — but not as part of a vacation package — at a participating property on Orbitz.com for stays through July 31, 2010, are eligible for a full refund if a government agency shuts a beach within 20 miles of the hotel or declares the waters dangerous, Orbitz says.

Here’s a list of the participating hotels, located from St. Petersburg to the Florida Keys.

To receive a refund through Orbitz’s Open Beach Guarantee, customers must request it for any unused hotel nights if a government agency declares a nearby beach off limits or dangerous.

“While our initial focus is Florida, we are working with hotel partners to quickly extend this guarantee to other Gulf Coast beach destinations,” states Barney Harford, president and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide.

“We hope to expand this to other regions in the Gulf outside of Florida soon, but since we had to work with each hotel to get them to sign onto this guarantee, we focused on Florida first (as it is our largest of the markets impacted),” adds Orbitz spokesman Brian Hoyt.

“ We also have been working with very concerned CVBs (Convention and Visitors Bureaus) in the region who approached us weeks ago asking us to help the state,” Hoyt says. “But we will get the other communities and more hotels on board soon.”

Orbitz also unveiled a resource center for travelers seeking timely information about the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

The Orbitz Care Center team provides daily updates, along with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration maps about the spill’s meanderings, volunteer opportunities and links to other governmental resources.

Here’s an image of Orbitz’s June 14, 2010, update about the spill.

The updates have a widget option at the bottom, enabling website publishers and bloggers to embed the code into their sites, and then to share the information on social networks.