Microsoft's seven-year effort at building up a Bing Travel brand has ended. The company has shifted its marketing muscle into promoting MSN Travel.
In 2008, Microsoft created a travel section for its recently launched Bing Search engine and paid about $115 million for Farecast, a fare-prediction startup, as its airfare search centerpiece.
There was a dedicated Bing Travel app for mobile devices. Also a Bing Travel news blog.
Yet Bing Travel never achieved traction with users. About three years ago, it stopped existing as an organizationally distinct department within Microsoft, though in summer 2012 the company did a full update of the Bing Travel app.
One big problem was when Microsoft tried (unsuccessfully) to block Google's acquisition of data provider ITA Software. In that context, according to GeekWire's interview with founder of Farecast, Oren Etzioni:
“Bing didn’t want to pay Google for the data required to power Farecast.”
By this time a year ago, it had stopped using the Farecast technology and replaced it with a white-label metasearch tool from Kayak.
At the same time, airfare prediction service Flyr is claiming superior accuracy, as well as uniquely flight-level forecasts -- making Farecast's data less relevant.
Last September, the MSN.com portal, which claims 425 million unique visitors a month and which is a default for people installing the Internet Explorer browser, has been expanded with "thousands" of destination guides based on content from sources such as Frommer's, TripAdvisor, and Michelin Travel.
Last month, Microsoft began pushing users to MSN Travel. Mobile users are being pushed to an MSN Travel app that absorbs the former Bing Travel app functionality.
A Microsoft spokesperson said in an interview:
"The rebranding of the apps fell in line with Microsoft’s strategy of a mobile first, cloud first world. The new MSN serves as a launching pad and distribution platform for many Microsoft services, including Bing and Microsoft account services."
Bing's 2,300 employees under vice president Brian McDonald can focus on search, while content can be the turf of MSN Travel's hotel search is powered by a mix of Kayak search results, Booking.com reviews, and VFM Leonardo images.
As for Bing Travel, the last vestige of the brand is in search. Whenever a user of the Bing.com search engine types in a travel search query, such as PHL to ORD, they are prompted to visit bing.com/travel for results.
It's probably only a matter of time before those users are also pointed to MSN Travel, just as followers of the Bing Travel social media accounts are already being redirected.
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