By Guy Taylor
Ryanair has said that the decision by a number of online travel agents (OTAs) to remove the airline’s flights from their websites will hit earnings in the short term.
In a statement, the low-cost carrier said that OTAs including Booking.com, Kiwi, Kayak had “suddenly” removed options to book with Ryanair from their sites in early December.
While this will not “materially affect” its full year traffic or profit after tax guidance, Ryanair said it would reduce short term yields and load factors, the proportion of its seats filled by passengers, by one to two per cent.
Ryanair has long scrapped with what it describes as OTA “pirates”, accusing them of malpractice and deliberately misleading customers through falsely advertised fees. Airlines generally prefer when passengers book directly as they bring in extra revenues through in-flight offers and options for seat selection.
The dispute has garnered attention from UK regulator’s including the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and featured a number of high profile court cases.
Travel agent On the Beach successfully sued Ryanair for £2m in October over failures to refund package holidays from the Covid-19 era. The airline has seperately launched legal action against Booking.com owner Booking Holdings and subsidiaries such as Kayak, Agoda and Priceline.
Ryanair suggested the “welcome removal” of its flights from the OTA’s websites could be a result of pressure from Consumer Protection Agencies or as a response to a recent Irish High Court ruling, which granted Ryanair a permenant injunction against the screenscaper Flightbox for “unlawfully scraping” its content for travel agents.
City A.M. approached Kiwi.com and Booking.com for comment.
The statement came alongside Ryanair’s December traffic report. The Irish carrier transported 11.52m guests over the month, up nine per cent year-on-year and at a load factor of 91 per cent.
But it was forced to cancel over 900 flights of the 72,500 flights operated in the month, due to the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
