Bing.com -- the newest flavor of the month?

If you’ve seen the television commercials and read the hype lately, you’d think that Bing.com was the be all and end all of search websites regarding travel (and other areas) to come into existence. Some reporters are questioning whether Bing.com will outweigh more popular sites in the battle for web usage.

Well, at the moment, the travel portion has a long way to go. In fact, not every city is listed or included – even some that you think should be there. Having been to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, I thought I’d look up some information on that destination to compare it to other sites I’d visited before my trip. If you choose the U.S. Virgin Islands and then click on destinations, the only city that comes up is Charlotte Amalie (in St. Thomas) and only one hotel there is listed as “popular”. St. Croix doesn’t exist according to Bing.

When I searched for Fort Lauderdale, the results were a bit more extensive. You click US, then Florida, then Fort Lauderdale to arrive at the most “popular” hotels. There are least 15 from which to choose on the pop-up screen right away. We can only assume that the skeptical consumer will be smart to question the choice of the word “popular”. The copy indicates that you will be able to compare reviews of these places, etc., but there aren’t any links provided to get these reviews. When you search for reviews (that is, type “reviews of Fort Lauderdale hotels” and then click on search), you get a list of sites like trip advisor and similar. If you click on a hotel’s name, you may get a few reviews. One featured hotel listed only 4 comments (from 2006 and 2007) and provided by “travelpost” (sorry I’m not familiar with them) which is a bit meager.

At the moment, Bing.com isn’t challenging anyone and has a way to go before becoming the champ it’s claiming to be. But like everything else technologically today, changes happen fast. So keep watching. Who knows, maybe Bing will be the new flavor of the month? Can it be just a few months ago that the world heard about twitter and now we can’t live without it? So South Flroida, what do you think about Bing?