What a hoot! If Bing maps are free, what's the "Sponsored by: Quality Inn" note for? Hang on, I have to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to Quality Inn.

Companies that make extensive use of Google Maps have needed an enterprise licence for using the maps for a long time. What Google has introduced recently is usage based charging (4K$/1000 map loads, first 2.5K per day free) for lower usage sites. google.com/enterprise/…maps-compare.html

TA will already be be paying a licence fee to Google considerably in excess of the 10K$ minimum enterprise licence fee and won't be affected by the new Google charges.

Bing also charges companies for using its maps microsoft.com/maps/product/licensing_for_ent…

The actual rates are obviously commercially sensitive and subject to negotiation but Bing has obviously managed to undercut Google by a sufficient margin to make it worth switching.

Thanks for the additional info, mymsman !

Very foolish move by Tripadvisor. Letting their users down bigtime. I can't use Bing maps on my Android device, so maps on the Tripadvisor app are now broken. Wake up Tripadvisor!

Oops, I overstated the cost of Googles usage charge by a few orders of magnitude it is 4$/1000 loads with 25K free.

This switch to Bing maps could be TA's fourth unpopular change in as many weeks! I wonder what April will bring us?

Yeah we hate Bing map. We have been using Tripadvisor for the last 2 days for planning our euro vacation this summer. All of a sudden Google Map switches to Bing Map and now, while looking at lodging locations, it doesn't show jack. We can't see Metro station locations or train stations for example which is real important for my consideration of a hotel as far as how many blocks I have to walk to get to public transit or metro stations. Bing sucks so I now have to open a Google Map in a separate window and copy and paste addresses over. But this takes too long so we may start looking elsewhere and maybe just come back to TA to look at reviews of our short list of hotel choices.

I'm currently in Japan and have been singing the praises of the trip advisor app for iPhone the whole time. It worked amazingly.The integration with google maps was effortless and made finding destinations or resteraunts a breeze. The forced update (which didn't mention anything about changing map providers) has made locating hotels/attractions/resteraunts in your App impossible. Did anyone even test the app with Bing Maps? actually tried to use it in a real situation to find a resteraunt say? No one would care about the change if it still retained the same functionality as before but It doesn't. Honestly you have to wonder what the guys at Trip Advisor were thinking....

Yes, I'm also travelling at the moment, and feel hugely inconvenienced by the lack of map support. With Bing maps, I can no longer get navigation, see street view, or put the little yellow stars as markers. Now it's all cut and paste into Google Maps. PITA. I am a senior contributor to TripAdvisor, and their app was one of the few apps on my Android that I always allowed update as I felt TA was a "trusted" company.

I read elsewhere the change was due to Google changing the pricing structure of Google Maps, but seriously TA, do you think you can just screw up the user experience of your users to save a few bucks? Stupid move.

Boy the Bing maps are a major let down! One of the best things about TA was being able to see exactly where you were going and where it was in the city. The Bing maps don't even have street names. What possible use do they serve?