Following yesterday’s massive rollout of several Bing search enhancements, one of their new content features, Attraction Answers, is fully functional today. Intended to complement over 3,000 new destination guides for cities around the world, Attraction Answers also offers more details on over 60,000 tourist attractions worldwide, with approximately 20,000 attractions across the US. The attractions […]
The attractions data, as well as the destination information is being provided by Frommer’s, so in many cases, you’ll be given links to the official attraction site, as well as a link to Frommer’s guidebook page to those destinations and attractions.
According to Bing, Attraction Answers are a quick snapshot of attractions for a specific destination in the SERP, while Destination Pages are a deeper look into the local area that includes travel information such as flight search and weather, as well as videos, images and events.
In reality, Attraction Answers don’t seem to appear as part of Bing Travel at all. If you’re on Bing.com/Travel, and you’re looking for information about “Boston, Ma”, you’ll get redirected back to the main Bing web search, rather than redirecting you to the new “Destinations” tab within Bing Travel.
So at first, you’ll see a nice snapshot of Boston travel information at the top of the SERP:
But you’ll notice that the ‘web’ results have travel related tabs. If you click on that “Destinations” tab, you’ll get an expanded view for Boston, Ma:
If users click on anything in the “Attractions” box, they go directly to Frommers. But, users who do a related search for “Things to do in Boston, MA”, you’ll get “one-box’ style results for both upcoming events (which is quite handy) and then further down, integrated “Attraction Answers”:
Now, if you click on any one of those Attraction Answers, for example “Paul Revere’s House“, you’ll be looking at a new set of Bing web results, with additional Attraction information, including useful data such as a link to Bing Maps, hours and official website URL:
The destination and attraction ‘one boxes’ are dynamically generated by the query, so the search experience and content can vary significantly by the information available. In the early planning stages, it might be very helpful to go down the path of many ‘attraction options’, as well as that quick glance at airfares.
Depending on the type of travel researcher, this may be helpful to many for inspiration. Others might get frustrated that it’s a constant loop, which often ends you at Frommer’s, which of course, does have some of the most comprehensive guidebook information.
But the feature is most useful when the query is more specific, and the SERPs present the quick one-box answers, perhaps more helpful right before a trip occurs or while actually visiting a given destination.