 Bing Travel homepage |
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| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Stable release | Final / June 3, 2009 |
| Type | Travel services |
| Website | http://www.bing.com/travel |
Bing Travel (previously Live Search Farecast and Farecast.com) is the first airfare prediction website in the computer reservations system industry. Bing Travel premiered to the public in May 2006 as Farecast, and went through a year of beta testing before emerging from beta on May 15th, 2007. Within the travel industry, Bing Travel is the only website to offer predictions on when is the best time to purchase airline tickets [1].
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History
Farecast was Founded in 2003 by Oren Etzioni (founder of MetaCrawler and a professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington), and has collected over 175 billion airfare observations[2] to date. Farecast's team of data miners use these airfare observations to build algorithms to predict future airfare price movements.
In August 2007 Farecast launched a beta version of its hotel search engine with an innovative "deals" rate key. In May 2007 the company released results of an independent audit verifying Farecast's prediction accuracy at 74.5 percent and also launched additional features such as Farecast Alerts (a notification service that will inform travelers of key price drops) and a flight quality filter that allows travelers to sort flights by type. In February 2007 Farecast introduced Fare Guard[3], which allows customers to lock-in a specific price for a flight and be protected from future price increases for the following seven days.
In April 2008, Farecast was bought by Microsoft for a fee believed to be around $75 million to 115 million [4]. Microsoft officially integrated it as part of its Live Search group of tools in May 2008. On June 3, 2009, Microsoft officially rebranded Live Search Farecast as Bing Travel as part of its efforts to create a new search identity.
Controversy
In 2009 there were allegations that Bing Travel had copied its layouts from Kayak.com. Microsoft denied the allegations and stated that "Bing Travel is based on independent development by Microsoft and Farecast.com, which Microsoft acquired in 2008. Any contrary allegations are without merit."[5]
References
- ^ "While other sites list airfares, newcomer forecasts where they're headed". boston.com. 2006-06-04. http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articles/2006/06/04/while_other_sites_list_airfares_newcomer_forecasts_where_theyre_headed/.
- ^ "Farecast.com Launches Airfare Deals Based On Science, Not Marketing". Farecast.com. 2007-03-13. http://www.farecast.com/about/press/releases/2007-03-13.do.
- ^ "Locking in a fare". chicagotribune.com. 2007-02-04. http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0702040003feb04,0,3562676.story?coll=chi-travel-hed.
- ^ "Microsoft buys travel search site". theregister.co.uk. 2008-04-18. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/18/microsoft_buys_farecast/.
- ^ "Kayak to Bing: Stop Copying Us! - Update". wired.com. June 24, 2009. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/kayak-bing/.
External links
Press and industry coverage
2009:
2008:
- Farecast Wins 2008 Webby Award for Travel
- Microsoft Acquires Farecast
- Farecast Adds International Airfare Predictions
2007:
- (August 29, 2007) Boston Globe announces Farecast launches a beta version of their hotel search engine
- Reuters Farecast went live on May 15, 2007 after about a year in beta testing
- TravelCom Res-Expo Innovator of the Year
- WSA Consumer Product of the Year
- PC World 20 Most Innovative Products for 2007
2006:
- Popular Science Best of What's New 2006
- Kiplingers Top 25 Travel Sites
- Business Week Best of Web
- Time Magazine 50 Coolest Sites
- Frommer's Editors Choice
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