Microsoft mashes Farecast and MSN Travel into Bing

Looking for Farecast or MSN Travel? You’ll be redirected to Bing Travel, which blends the two websites and adds some extras.

The new Microsoft site offers MSN Travel’s insights into destinations plus Farecast’s predictions, which advise on the best time to buy the cheapest airfare. In addition, when you search for flights, the site displays your recent searches and a link to hotels at your destination.

Its blog, patterned on Farecast’s, will expand beyond flight info, said Mike Fridgen, Microsoft’s director of product management, who gave me a run-through. Travel gurus Peter Greenberg and Pauline Frommer and Farecast’s “fareologist” Joel Grus will also contribute to the site.

Bing Travel is part of Microsoft’s ballyhooed Bing search engine — launched today — the software giant’s bid to improve its share of the Internet search market, where it ranks third behind Google and Yahoo.

Bing, which claims to reduce clicks and produce answers faster, has garnered mixed but generally positive reviews on sites such as TechCrunch, Gizmodo and PCMag.com,  Besides travel,  it offers targeted searches for videos, images, shopping, news and maps.

Have you checked out Bing Travel? What do you think?

— Jane Engle, assistant Los Angeles Times Travel editor

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 1, 2009 at 5:21 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under Airline travel, Business Travel, Deals, Frequent Flier, Global, Hotels, Luxury Travel, News, Tips & Advice, Travel Insider. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.