News this week that Microsoft’s fully functioning Bing Travel will not be hitting Europe in 2009 means that another site from the USÂ with air price data prediction tools at its heart, FareCompare, might make it first.
Bing says the complexity of gathering historic data about fares over any given period is time consuming and has affected its ability to launch the Farecast system overseas.
FareCompare faces similar issues on the number crunching front, but has a roadmap which could see it outside of the US sooner than Bing Travel.
FareCompare is aiming to have worldwide coverage of ATPCO data (a body which collects fare data on behalf of the industry) by January 2010, says CEO Rick Seaney.
The company currently has domestic US and Canadian data from October 2004 to the present day and in/outbound for the US and Canada since January 2006.
The influx of worldwide data, Seaney says, means FareCompare will be pricing “millions of new itineraries” every day.
“Our aspiration is to have worldwide coverage of the most comprehensive database in the world of current and historical airfare pricing data and to bring to market a variety of tools that slices this massive database to the marketplace, via dot-com and social media.”
The question for potential European rivals of FareCompare and Bing will be if they can afford to get their hands on – or have a desire to include – similar data sets in order to publish the prediction tools which have made the two US sites popular.
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I have to wonder if we really need another comparison flight site in the UK or Europe? Are either of these sites going to add any added benefit to consumers over the likes of Kayak, Skyscanner and Travel Supermarket?
Darren: The difference between Bing (Farecast)/Farecompare and the European metas is that the US guys use historical data to give users an idea of when fares are likely to move up and down.
This is a key differentiator as, and you are right, what would be the point of simply having another meta player.
Taking the cynical view, of course, you could say that metasearch players aren’t really worried about crowding the market. If there is traffic and leads to suppliers, there is money to be made.
The point is that Bing results show up at the top, so its not the issue of having another meta player, its Bing will expand the market using search engines to look for travel deals again.
I would assumed that portals like Kayak and Expedia may get less direct visitors but should be getting more qualified visitors and better conversion rates from Bing Travel…