Microsoft this morning announced that it is rolling out Bing Travel, one of the verticals it’s focusing much of its attention on when it comes to the recently unveiled “decision engine” the company set out to conquer market share from Google and Yahoo Search. Bing Travel, as we mentioned when we posted the first screenshots based on the Kumo preview, combines a lot of the airfare and hotel reservation tools from Microsoft’s 2008 acquisition of Farecast with news and other editorial content from MSN Travel (in fact, travel.msn.com already redirects to the new search engine).
Bing Travel is one of the initiatives that Microsoft is launching to differentiate Bing from traditional search engines which mostly provide information and links instead of tools that help visitors make more informed decision quicker. Customers will be able to take advantage of tools and features like Price Predictor (designed to forecast how airfare prices are going to evolve), Rate Indicator (set up to highlight the best hotel deals), but also Travel Deals, Comparison Flight & Hotel Search, and Fare Alerts.
According to Redmond, 45 percent of people use a search engine to select a flight or hotel. Out of those, a survey by Bing Travel pointed out that 52 percent of potential travelers search three or more sites before booking their airfare, and 42 percent of travelers spend between one and four weeks weighing their travel options (17 percent even spend more than one month). Microsoft wants to reduce that time by centralizing comprehensive results based on searches for travel information in one place.
We’ll take Bing Travel for spin and post a detailed post about our findings soon, but for now do tell us what your first impression of Bing’s Travel section is in comments.
Looks like a kayak.com ripoff.
I agree, it looks a lot like kayak.com
Actually it looks like, and is, farecast, the company Microsoft bought in spring of ‘08. Do your research.
… which was a rip-off of kayak even back then – with the only innovation being the cheesy fare predictor. The search engine behind farecast/bing is ita software (it really powers the results of all travel search engines that matter these days).
Given that all these web-sites do not much else but put an interface on great technology, Microsoft could have innovated … maybe just this one time.
I’d say bing is a bong …. oops … that would actually be good .. never mind …
Except, unlike Kayak it fails to provide a straight forward +/- X search day criteria which makes it more or less useless. Can’t begin to count how many hundreds of dollars setting a flexible departure or return date has saved me.
Who cares if it looks like another site not. We all know that R&D stand for ripoff and duplicate. The question was whether it works well or not. I think Microsoft is really starting to make headway in search. THey may screw it up or lose sight of the goal, but at least they are getting the puck down the ice.
Just did some comparisons between Bing and Kayak, and although it does look exactly the same, in 3 cases I ended up getting lower rates on Bing. Its odd that Kayak would not have the same information here. And I love the buy/wait tip.
Bing Travel often shows low price fares that are in fact not available; Kayak more often filter these out.
Not a rip-off at all. Farecast is one of the original travel meta-search companies started around the same time as Kayak and were the first to offer a price predictor.
Bing Travel is one of the initiatives that Microsoft is launching to differentiate Bing from traditional search engines which mostly provide information and links instead of tools that help visitors make more informed decision quicker
Well it seems that if they are able to leverage the search engine to bring people to bing travel they will pose a threat to Expedia.
The usability is quite nice, completely destroys the one at AA and similar.
Actually Microsoft is the one who started expedia with one travel guru(i dont remember his name) of that time, and bing in no way is a threat to expedia..they both are doing different things….
one is just search n other is actually selling the stuff and giving away commisions to affiliates like bing..
Looks really good. Shame it’s so US centric, and doens’t really cater to us here in the UK.
Sounds great…
Isn’t this just farecast?
http://www.tech...ecast-for-115m/
Farecast tools mixed with editorial content and integrated into the main Bing search engine.
Im still not too sure about this product, but it is good to see they are making specific search tools.
Looks like Microsoft is finally trying to get their sh*t together.
i was going to say the same!
Now I think google will become more aggressive, may be it has too. Seems like microsoft is trying really hard to make a dent on google’s reach!
Now, it makes me feel that this is going to an “EPIC WAR” between all the search engines (Google vs Bing)!
And I already know the winner: that is “US” (the users).
I love it, Microsoft rocks! Google is blah, I mean they just got a logo now with whitespace….weirdos.
I love Bing, Bing, Bing!
Bing killed the “search engine” – its about decisions now fool! hehe
If Google think all they have to do to take the spotlight from Bing is launch a spread sheet (Google Squared), it shows what an arrogant and out-of-date company they’ve become.
Google is dead. Why search for something when you can bing it?
Thanks Google now we have a spreadsheet….hear that tweens now Google has created a spreadsheet for you? so not hot…uncool
This is quite impressive.
What can I say…
innovation = search_market(increased_competition);
I used Bing travel yesterday to find a hotel for a trip I’m going on. I loved the deal/not a deal indicator and the map functionality. Still pleasantly surprised about Bing.
Is this Mahalo.com killer?
Seems to be going after the same high traffic verticals as Mahalo.com in some cases…
Are you trying to imply Mahalo is still alive and relevant? Mahalo was big for one day and that was all because Tech Crunch covered it. (And that obviously has nothing to do with the fact Arrington and Calacanis are friends)
anyone else notice how much it looks like kayak.com results pages?
Yes, it’s true..
I hadn’t used Farecast before this, but I just did a search and enjoyed the Kayak-ness of it. It was pretty neat to see that it suggested that I wait before buying the ticket because the search engine was 80%+ positive that the prices would stay level or drop in the next 7 days. Pretty neat stuff!
When Farecast predictions are wrong (as they often are), they can be VERY wrong, and result in you losing a lot of money.
As expected, Microsoft is doing everything in its power to destroy anything remotely good they created.
A search engine should find pages on the web. A online traveling services should help you find good deals. The more they drift away from search, the easier things will be for Google.
Honestly it just makes me wonder why Microsoft bothered spinning off Expedia…
I Binged my gf last night. She seemed to like it.
I binged my wife and now we are having our second child. Its a boy! we found out Tuesday, thanks bing!
lmfao… that was hilarious!
Smart move. Search for SFO to BOS on Google takes me to Bing Travel. Hilarious!! Google needs to enter certain verticals!!
Watch out for Google buying out Kayak http://www.itva...get-binged.html
i think its smart to try and incoporate different services in to a search engine to help you make decisions.
off topic. certin search yield a ‘reference’ link in the explorer pain. clicking on it takes you to a page where bings in the info and add additional functionality like the article outline and top image/video links.
why is this available for certain searches and not other. is it not completely roll out? it seems very useful.
http://www.bing...squirrel+monkey
is this end for mobissimio (www.mobissimo.com) ?
is this available only in the US?
It’s basically farecast, which I used over the weekend. I love farecast, so I’m likely to use Bing for that. However, now that it’s fully integrated into Bing, my expectations increase to see them add more airports and destinations. They only have 5 or 6 in Europe and don’t have any in Asia or South America. If they step it up, this could make a great case for Bing travel search.
It works really well, but the only sad part is that your “Travel Account” is seperate from your Live ID. I was hoping they would have integrated the two by now.
Released today? Really? I’ve been playing with the Travel section of BING since release day.
Personally I really like the Hotel review pages and metrics consolidated from city search and yelp. Does a lot of the work for me. The airfare price graphs are also very slick.
Non-stop flight from Glasgow, UK to Paris, France for 2 adults gives best price of $1733 (£1068) with EasyJet. EasyJet give the same flight for £250
It’s not that bad.
You forgot to mention it also gives you the option to use several other airlines non-stop flight from 235USD… (yeah Air France has the best price
Not sure what dates you were looking for (I searched 6/10 – 6/12 ) and I am located in US – don’t know what you see in UK, but it does offer you a better deal it just did not find it for easyJet for some reason.
It’s SideStep with fewer features and harder to use
As you can see everyone loves Bing. Microsoft should put in a bid offer for YouTube just to shake Google up,.. What was Google thinking with all those colors anyway?
Hey Microsoft! Welcome to the internet! Took you long enough….maybe too much time on the *bong*!
LOL
Microsoft took Google with a Bing!
Google died already,. I dont even use it…I was tired of searching anyway…now I have bing make vital decisions for me and I love it.
Bing bing! Who let the bing out? roof roof
I love Bing Travel, so easy to use, and the results, at least in the US, are quite robust. As someone else mentions, it has been available since Bing released. It’s actually the successor of farecast (google search for farecast will direct you to this site)
I like Bing Travel A LOT! But it’d be nice if, in addition to price prediction, they have email alert, to allow you to track prices. That’d be very convenient!
Also, they should somehow allow you to LOGIN, and SAVE searches (or is it available but I’m not seeing it somehow?), like Google history. Then I’d be a Bing converter.
Has anyone looked at OpTrip ( http://www.optrip.com ) yet? Pretty interesting automatic travel package generation. It was launched recently and some ex-Google people were involved, although it’s not affiliated with Google in any way.
Not sure if it’s on Bing’s radar yet…
It took years for Microsoft to match (or in some ways better) Google’s search. It will take only a few months for Google to come back much stronger and then Bing will be truly binged! Microsoft would then take another few years to catch up! I give kudos to MSFT on coming up with Bing but when you take so many years to “catch up”, you need to do a lot more to cause any disruption! Google has capability to react very very fast!
keep dreaming. its free. meanwhile, Google is gonna Binged exactly where it hearts.
And Google is paid? LOL
As my colleague Joe Buhler stated in his comment this is not a Kayak copy but rather the former Farecast software purchased by Microsoft. I’ve been tracking Meta-search since they came to the market and in 2007 I was involved with the early development of Travelzoo’s Fly.com. The key differentiator for Bing Travel is the positioning of the travel search on the main search menu. The first media company to purchase a meta-search was Yahoo! with the original innovator Farecast, which preceded Kayak. Unfortunately Yahoo! Travel never capitalized on the meta-search model and Carol Bartz killed the project when she came on board.
Kayak launched in 2004 – Farecast in 2006 – two years later, with an interface that looked like kayak’s even back then.
Kayak has consistently outranked farecast in visitor stats by at least a factor of six.
Yahoo’s product was Farechase – not Farecast.
I believe that of the “original” cast of meta-searchers, only Mobissimo and Kayak.com remain independent companies today.
While I’m at it:
1) Is anyone else wondering why tripadvisor (also owned by MS) is not part of bling travel search? Tripadvisor is by far the best Hotel (re-)search engine, but instead of harnessing that we get some lame 2nd tier hotel capability. Is MS hedging? How about TA’s recent addition of flight searches?
2) How long until we see lawsuits ala AA v Kayak. Now that behemoth MS is running the searches, more airlines might assert their rights over airfare pricing.
a search for flights from Brussels to NY gave me a cheaper price on Kayak(815$) compared with Bing (997$).
other than that i compared the hotel prices they offer with the price on the official page of the hotel chain and i did not manage to find a cheaper price, on other websites from time to time manage to find better deals by first using a general travel website to find hotels and then look at the official website of the hotel.
o,a new travel Microsoft website http://www.bing.travel ! ilike it
anyways, who are you..Couger?….You love MSFT?…. NOM… You seem to make a lot of noise for bing… bing is good…really… but Google ain’t bad either…
Bing travel on Fire !!! – http://www.mone...s/bing-on-fire/
Maybe it’s an anomaly, but I just gave the Bing travel a shot for the first time, punching in roundtrip flight information from JAX to CMI, no restrictions on stops, etc.
Bing’s lowest quoted fare was $548, with stops in Dallas and Chicago; I even used Bing to check American Airlines’ price, which it quoted as $548.
I went to aa.com independently, and got a price of $391, with stops in Miami and Chicago. Strange, I thought, so I went to Expedia.com: $390. Travelocity: $391. Hotwire: $391.
Like I said, it may be a fluke, but I’m not impressed so far; 4 searches, and Bing is the only one that missed the boat (or plane, as it were).