priceline added a new functionality to it's site adding great value to their price conscious customer base. considering that destination and source market is mainly us-based, their map-api choice is not too much of a deal breaker, however look at my post below showing the priceline inventory for bangkok hotels - bing doesn't provide any relavant map material. they have evolved nicely though with three sliders which i haven't seen on any other price map so far.
agoda, an affiliate of priceline, chose google maps to visualize the hotel locations but has just recently abandoned the sort-by-price feature - apparently it pays off as they have not reverted back to the old sorting options.
still, bing maps is probably a smart choice considering there are so many geo marketers out there that are optimizing for google maps.

Itinerary monitoring and travel alerts

Get text messages about flight delays, cancellations and gate changes.

Alternate flights

Get the best options for any flight problem, including flight status and open seats.

Point Tracker

Track your frequent flyer miles and hotel points in one place.

Inner Circle

Automatically share every trip with key people, like your spouse or office assistant.

Charter Member Perk

20% off a Virgin America flight*

One-time special discount for travel dates between Aug 26 and Nov 11. Book by Aug 16.

sounds pretty decent, huh? for only 49 usd it's a steal the first year if the incentive of a 20% voucher off of your next flight is something you can use - and most of us frequent travellers will, right? i've so far only been using their basic service and was wondering how tripit will monetize as they are also offering free access for ota's and developers to their api - so in essence everyone could even develop this service by themselves or maybe come up with another monetization feature.

tripit would like to see ota's integrate their api but i don't really get where this makes sense as they offer such great usability already - it would only dilute the ota's brand perception as of now... are you using tripit only to brag on linkedin or do you really have great use of it so far? what's your thought on tripit's new offering?

For the past three years the web-based application has been providing smaller hotels with benchmarking, channel management and booking engine functionalities primarily for the Asian and African markets. eRevMax now plans to expand the reach of the distribution management product - SimpleDistribution – into Europe and America tailored to small, independent hotels with 40 rooms or less starting from €750 per year.

after the deal closed with trust two weeks ago, this is for sure giving erevmax some further leverage by being the only player in the industry that has a channel management solution specifically tailored to smaller and independant hotels although there are so many more solutions out there that are able to cover the same functionality at a more competitive price tag - but it's all about roaring out load, rrright?

additionally, erevmax announced that their development center in kolkata will now be the base for their first sales office in asia - when are we going to see localized versions with more competitive prices for the small inn's, b&b's and homestays?

In anticipation of the official opening of Beijing’s newest landmark of luxury, Fairmont Beijing have reached out to the online community using the web’s fastest-growing media platform, Twitter. This ‘tweeting’ journey which began on April 30 has since grown to have more than 1,600 followers.

apart from the fact that 1600 followers are not really a sign of success for a twitter campaign as it's the relevancy of the followers that counts it's sad to see that impactasia had just today sent out a press release to gain further momentum where the account is actually suspended.
lets hope for all involved that they are able to resurrect the twitter account and lets hope the agency is getting the terms straight. the chosen general hashtag 'countdown' yields just too many irrelevant results...

update:
http://status.twitter.com/post/136164828/restoring-accidentally-suspended-acc... - man-made error is most likely to blame for the suspension of the account