DailyTech - Microsoft Launches Bing Travel

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Internet Microsoft Launches Bing Travel
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - June 8, 2009 10:50 AM

8 comment(s) - last by JosefTor.. on Jun 8 at 3:43 PM

Bing Travel combines MSN Travel editorial content with Farecast information

Microsoft has pulled out all the stops to create a search engine that can battle Google. The software giant first tried to buy Yahoo, which ultimately failed and resulted in Yahoo's then CEO being forced to step down.

Microsoft moved on and has created a new search engine called Bing that is now available for searchers to use. Along with the Bing search engine Microsoft has also launched Bing Travel. Microsoft says, "[Bing Travel] will help consumers make smart travel decisions through a variety of innovative tools and features."

Bing Travel is the new Decision Engine offered by Microsoft and aims to help travellers easily find and book airfare and hotel accommodations for trips. Bing Travel combines the airfare and hotel tools Microsoft acquired with its purchase of Farecast with the editorial content form MSN Travel.

A Bing Travel survey found that 52% of travellers search three or more sites before booking airfare. The survey also found that 42% of travellers spend between one and four weeks weighing travel options. Bing aims to significantly reduce the time it takes to find a good fare and book trips.

Bing Travel General manager Hugh Crean said, "Bing Travel has a simple goal: help people make smarter, more informed decisions regarding travel. Travellers face plenty of challenges—from airport security and luggage restrictions to finding their hotel in an unknown city or trying to speak a foreign language. Researching and booking travel should be simple and easy, and now Bing Travel is here to help."

Bing Travel tools include a price predictor, rate indicator, travel deals for flight and hotel, comparison flight and hotel search, fare alerts and original travel editorial content. One major web metrics company has announced that Bing had taken the second place spot from Yahoo in the search category. StatCounter said that Bing had grabbed 16.82% of the U.S. market leaving Yahoo with 10.22% of the market. However, other metrics firms have issued contrary reports.

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Gouge my eyes out

By chmilz on 6/8/2009 11:10:04 AM , Rating: 3

quote:
A Bing Travel survey found that 52% of travelers search three or more sites before booking airfare. The survey also found that 42% of travelers spend between one and four weeks weighing travel options.

If it takes between one and four weeks to weigh travel options, I'd suggest the travel and airline industries need to get their crap together. I can't imagine the amount of travelers that ultimately decide to vacation locally or not at all because of planning frustrations for larger vacations.

RE: Gouge my eyes out

By icanhascpu on 6/8/2009 11:51:20 AM , Rating: 2

You have to ask yourself how they did this survey. Don't just sit and believe it.

Besides that sites like Travelocity/Expidia (orbitz sucks) have great tools to make a Flight+Hotel+Car or a combination of and you often get a package discount plus already lower rates. I sound like commercial but honestly I dont see why people would plan travel any other way if they plan to fly. Road-trips are a different story.

Parent

Bing..

By icanhascpu on 6/8/2009 11:46:36 AM , Rating: 1

..is a retarded name. They should of stuck with the Live branding.

RE: Bing..

By monkeyman1140 on 6/8/2009 3:09:03 PM , Rating: 3

They should have called it Pew. That way people can say Pew Pew Pew

Parent

Watch out

By Danger D on 6/8/2009 11:11:09 AM , Rating: 2

I fear that Bing Travel will not be safe now that the Pirates of the Swedish Parliment have begun their campaign to loot and pillage international copyrights and patents.

Good, but the still need a bit more to dethrone google.

By Luticus on 6/8/2009 11:26:58 AM , Rating: 2

I love the new features of Bing for the most part; however, they still have a long way to go. Like when you type a word into Google, for instance, if it's misspelled Google will often times still return relevant results and even give you a suggested spelling list which allows you to use Google as an effective spell checker. With Bing even the slightest misspellings can sometimes result in the engine finding nothing. Improvements there would probably get me to switch permanently. Google just has a lot of little things that make it nice, if Bing could surpass some of that I'd be all for it. I already use Bing a good bit.

gross

By SavagePotato on 6/8/2009 3:17:41 PM , Rating: 2

It makes me think of the bing bong brothers, that can never be a good thing.

Bing search results

By JosefTor on 6/8/2009 3:43:43 PM , Rating: 2

Does anyone have the same experience as me? I compared the search results from Google and Bing and the Bing results were just not as helpful.

Example: I searched for "what is the sdge baseline based on?" On Google and Yahoo this returned the following webpage www.sdge.com/customer/baseline.shtml which helped a lot. Under Bing I just got a bunch of stupid pdf files like this: www.sdge.com/tm2/pdf/1598-E.pdf.

How does Microsoft expect to compete if the search results are not as good? You can change your name to a verb but the reason I gave up on other search engines like Yahoo is that I did not like the results.

Plus... I wish Bing was created as a subsidiary of Microsoft since Google has a much "cooler" brand than Microsoft. I would much rather help Google than Microsoft.

"We are going to continue to work with them to make sure they understand the reality of the Internet. A lot of these people don't have Ph.Ds, and they don't have a degree in computer science." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis