Pressure to refund customers during the pandemic led to the transformation of relations between Ryanair and travel retailers, the carrier has confirmed.
Ryanair flights became available via aggregator Travelfusion this week following a successful technology integration in line with an agreement announced at the end of July – the latest in a series of deals since a breakthrough agreement between Ryanair and loveholidays in January.
The airline has since signed deals with companies including Expedia, Tui, On the Beach, Etraveli, lastminute.com and Kiwi, giving agents and operators as well as OTAs increasing options to access Ryanair flights.
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Ryanair chief marketing officer Dara Brady hailed the latest deal as “particularly important for anyone not of larger scale”, saying: “It gives the same opportunities to make a direct connect [with Ryanair] as the other agreements.”
He told Travel Weekly: “It has been a remarkable change in the industry in the last nine months.”
Brady explained the impetus for the change came during the pandemic, noting: “We had three problems: our prices were being marked up, we didn’t have real customer contact details if there were problems, and we had some OTAs saying ‘Ryanair didn’t refund us’ and not passing on money.”
Brady conceded: “We never noticed the size of the problem before Covid. We didn’t have millions of customers contacting us saying ‘We didn’t get our money’ till then.
“We were paying the OTAs [refunds] and they were using the money as cashflow. So, we imposed a customer verification process and the OTAs said, ‘This is painful’. Loveholidays was first to ask, ‘What can we do to fix this?’”
He argued: “We’re pragmatic. We were getting the bookings anyway. But we said, ‘Don’t overcharge and give us the customer details’, and we had a deal. OTAs realised they can work with Ryanair so long as they don’t mess with our prices.”
More: Ryanair and On the Beach seal ‘transformational’ partnership
Brady suggested: “EDreams and Booking.com are the only OTAs of note not to have signed agreements. We had a landmark legal judgment against Booking in the US and we would be surprised if Booking doesn’t look for an agreement. But we don’t care so long as they display our prices and we have customers’ contact details.
“EDreams is different because their business model is scraping and adding fees. We don’t see eDreams signing up for anything.”
Travelfusion said Ryanair fares would be “available to all agencies within our networks of OTAs, travel management companies and tour operators”.
Media reports this week suggested Ryanair could be poised to begin offering packages following a Telegraph interview with chief executive Michael O’Leary headlined ‘Ryanair plans assault on package holiday market’.
O’Leary was quoted as saying: “I wouldn’t rule out setting up a holidays division.”
But the interview made clear Ryanair would not consider doing so until it took full delivery of the Boeing aircraft it has on order. These deliveries extend to 2034.
In May, O’Leary told analysts: “I’m not a believer in the package holiday business. We don’t want the distraction of package holidays.”