Last month, major online travel agents, including Booking.com, ceased offering Ryanair flights.
This decision was seen as a response to Ryanair’s ongoing efforts to combat screen-scraping and unauthorized reselling of its flights by online travel agents.
As a result, Ryanair expects a slight decrease in its load factors, ranging from 1% to 2% for December and January.
Nonetheless, the airline remains confident that this action will not significantly impact its full-year passenger traffic or expected profit after tax.
Ryanair plans to counter this move by reducing its fares, aiming to encourage passengers to book tickets directly through its website, Ryanair.com.
The load factor, which represents the percentage of available seats sold on its flights, is crucial for the airline’s profitability.
Before the pandemic, online travel agents accounted for approximately 10% of Ryanair’s ticket sales. By 2021, this figure had risen to 20%, according to Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary.
The airline has been engaged in legal battles with online travel agents over the years, striving to prevent them from scraping and reselling its flights on their own platforms.
Ryanair has also implemented measures to verify the identities of passengers who book through online travel agents.
This additional red tape is expected to deter individuals from purchasing Ryanair flights through third-party websites.
Ryanair attributed the recent removal of its flights from online travel agent websites to potential pressure from consumer protection agencies, the Irish High Court’s ruling granting a permanent injunction against screenscraper Flightbox, and Ryanair’s “Know Your Passenger” customer initiatives.
While acknowledging that these online travel agents represented only a small fraction of their bookings, Ryanair anticipates a short-term reduction in load factors and yields for December and January.
However, the airline remains optimistic about its financial performance, expecting a profit after tax of up to €2.05 billion for the fiscal year ending in March.
In addition to the removal of its flights, Ryanair had previously accused Booking.com of being partly responsible for a cyberattack on its payment processing platform between September and October.
Booking.com vehemently denied these allegations, describing them as baseless.
Ryanair’s legal battle against Booking Holdings and its subsidiaries, including Kayak, Agoda, and Priceline, continues, with the airline accusing them of screen-scraping its fares.
Despite Ryanair’s claims of a connection between the cyberattack and Booking.com’s actions, lawyers for Booking Holdings and its subsidiaries have strongly denied any involvement or knowledge of the attack.
They have characterized Ryanair’s assertions as speculative and unfounded.