Two Spanish travel websites have defied attempts by Ryanair to prevent them from screen-scraping and have re-commenced displaying the airline’s fares.
The budget carrier reacted by pledging to enhance its reCAPTCHA anti-screen scraping security measure.
The latest development came just two days after Ryanair claimed victory in preventing Edreams and Bravofly from scraping its site for inventory on Friday.
But Ryanair disclosed yesterday that the two companies in Spain had started to display its prices again.
The airline “vowed to continue to protect consumers against the unauthorised sale of its seats by screen-scrapers, and will now modify its new reCAPTCHA internet security feature, after Edreams and Bravofly recommenced the unauthorised display and sale of Ryanair’s low fares, just hours after Ryanair welcomed their decision to cease scraping Ryanair.com”.
It claimed that the reversal by Edreams and Bravofly “proves that while Ryanair has not been adversely affected by the blocking on unauthorised travel sites/agents, these sites/agents clearly can’t survive without access to Ryanair’s low fares, which they then offer to customers at inflated prices or with hidden charges.”
Pledging to continue to find ways to block screen-scrapers, the airline’s spokesman Stephen McNamara said: “Ryanair was delighted when Edreams and Bravofly stopped displaying our prices and seats last Friday.
“We expected them to look for a way around our new reCAPTCHA security measures since they clearly can’t operate their price comparisons without displaying Ryanair’s lowest fares.
“Ryanair will continue to implement security measures to get rid of unauthorised screen-scrapers and travel agents from our website, so that we can maximise consumer access and continue to improve the response times for ordinary passengers who want to book Europe’s lowest air fares without doing it through costly and expensive unauthorised screenscrapers such as Edreams and Bravofly.”
The renewed attack on screen-scrapers is a major issue for dynamic packaging travel agents in the UK for whom Ryanair is the biggest source of flights with some estimated to include them in 60% of what they sell.