Actually pretty much kicks them in the chukkies on strategy -
Management is telling the Bing Travel team that they are not rock stars from Mars, that that they cannot innovate, and that it's better to use someone else's technology.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-microsoft-employee-5-things-the-kayak-deal-tells-us-about-bing-2011-3
That's too bad, look at what happened last time a search engine team settled for being number two.
The intention of Microsoft to partner rather than purchase in verticals has been public knowledge - although not widely spread - for more than 2 years so I don't think this guy was paying attention (and, under NDA until it became public knowledge, known to trusted parties even further back). Microsoft even went as far as stating the specific verticals they were targeting (which differed in the US and UK due to medical being mostly public in the UK).
Furthermore, Google is getting some serious bad press for trying to be everything to everyone (more ads or own brand results than organic in some common searches) - why would Bing want to go down that route when they can look at alternatives (indeed, an alternative experience is part of the plan for Bing).
It'll be interesting to see what Bing does, if I were them I'd be getting those quality sites that got whacked by the panda / content farm update on side.