Web Watch: Bing tells travelers the best time to buy
— -- Site:Bing.com/travel
What it offers:Travel booking and advice
What we like:Buy now or wait? Bing Travel, which launched this week as part of Microsoft's new Bing.com search portal, offers the most direct advice available online for a prospective traveler. The site's airfare Price Predictor (a key feature from Farecast.com, which Microsoft bought and folded into the new site) takes historical data and current trends and suggests whether fares are likely to head up or down on your chosen route. It also offers a graph of recent fares for your route, and shows dates on which fares may spike. A nifty grid lets you see how your airfare may change according to departure time. Spur-of-the-moment travelers will love the site's airfare deals section, which calls out record low airfares on select routes.
For hotels, the site tags listed room rates as a "deal" or "not a deal" by comparing the current price to the hotel's rate history. The site makes great use of interactive maps, allowing a user to refine hotel searches or browse best airfares by distance, price and other parameters. A freeform search for an airline prominently displays a customer service phone number and key links.
What needs work:Airfare searches do not allow flexible date ranges. Price prediction isn't available for all airports (though a form allows users to nominate their own for consideration). Destinations content is very thin, currently offering only hotel reviews for select cities; Bing spokesman Mike Fridgen says the site will be augmenting this area in the coming months. Some of the site's best features require a few clicks to reach. Although the site does a good job describingits methodology, predictions are not ironclad,as travel pricing is notoriously volatile.
