There been a lot of talk about BING in the search industry and a key category they focus on is Travel. Having worked as the Director of Internet Marketing at Hawaiian Airlines for almost 5 years, I wanted to test planning a trip to Hawaii from Los Angeles however, my experience was a little less than satisfactory.
I first started doing a very general search for “flights to Hawaii” and got the following results:
Seeing the “$235 from Los Angeles (LAX>HNL)…” was very enticing for a roundtrip flight. However, I really didn’t care about New York or Boston since I live in the Metro Area of Los Angeles and my general search should have been a good indicator that I am looking for travel from airports where I live based on my IP Address. Results should have been more focused on airports in my area.
After clicking on the $235 link, I was taken to following jumble of information and forms making it somewhat confusing to understand what my next step should be to book this price.
Once you get passed the usability confusion of this page and start searching for flights, you are then taken to a page listing all available flight options available for the supposed $235 price. This is where I and probably many other consumers would get very disappointed as the price now changes from $235 to $276.
Running Internet Marketing and Advertising for Hawaiian Airlines, I’ve learned that displaying prices like $235 which DON’T include taxes and fees and having no disclaimer stating that taxes and fees are not included is considered misleading (bait and switch). This can be penalized with fines from the Department of Transportation (DOT). That is probably a big reason why many paid search advertisers don’t advertise prices in Search Ads (as shown above) because it can be a nightmare to manage and make sure they are always DOT compliant.
On another note, comparing BING to a Trusted and Well Established company like Orbitz shows they have some ways to go before they can really get a good foothold in the travel industry. Running similar searches on Orbitz and using their Matrix Technology to find flights before and after my target dates made it very easy to find the best available prices. In addition, the prices listed include taxes and fees so there are very little or no surprises when you actually start booking your flights as you can see in the below examples with $255 roundtrip prices.
Clicking the Yellow Highlighted box from the Orbitz Matrix above returned the following flight option results with prices as seen and expected from the matrix:
What’s troubling is that Orbitz shows better fares than what BING shows for the same date ranges (Leave 8/27/09, Return 9/3/09). It appears that BING does not offer Northwest Airline flights and as such makes me question how trustworthy the pricing info really is if they are missing data from large air carriers like Northwest Airlines.
In summary, BING does have some ways to go and some issues to overcome before they can be seen as trusted source for travel pricing and information. Unfortunately until then, consumers such as myself will probably use the same travel comparison websites and will probably never try BING again due to this unpleasant experience.
A Little Travel Tip: When using comparison sites like Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia and once you’ve identified an air carrier with the best price, you should also go to that air carrier’s website to see if they offer even better deals when booking directly with the air carrier or possibly through the air carrier’s frequent flyer program. I.e. Northwest appears to be the best price on Orbitz so I would normally go to their website (http://www.nwa.com/) and check to see if there are any better deals.
Happy Travels!