A range of improved services, fee reductions and digital developments are to be introduced by Ryanair over the coming year.
The move came as the budget carrier unveiled an eight-point ‘customer charter’ including a promise to make travel an “enjoyable experience” as Ryanair marks its 30th anniversary.
The ten new service initiatives have been announced in the second year of a three-year ‘always getting better’ programme.
These include:
- New aircraft interiors and cabin crew uniforms
- Lower airport check-in fees, missed departure fees and a new flight cancellation option of €15 per segment fee, within 24 hours of booking.
- Real time airline fare comparisons on Ryanair.com
- A new destination content service, featuring customer reviews.
- A new travel insurance product, replacing the current drop down insurance.
- A personalised Ryanair.com website with up to 100 versions of the homepage and personalised promotional emails with customer-specific tailored offers.
- A new ‘hold the fare’ feature – €5 to hold a fare for 24 hours.
- An improved inflight menu, with more healthy meal choices and a hot breakfast pre-order service on key routes.
- New seats with more leg room.
- Faster native mobile apps, an improved Ryanair.com desktop and an enhanced ‘My Ryanair customer registration system.
Chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, said: “Europe’s customers have always chosen Ryanair for our low fares and great choice of routes and through our always getting better programme, we are continuing to improve our customer experience.
“Those low fares won’t change, but we will continue to listen and strive to enhance every aspect of our business and our new customer charter outlines the way we want to deliver an enjoyable, simple and low cost travel experience to customers.
“Our customers can look forward to an improved inflight experience with new cabin interiors and a new menu, fantastic new digital features including personalised websites, a faster app, ‘hold the fare’ and price comparison features and great destination content, reduced fees and a new flight cancellation option, as well as new insurance products.
“We will also continue to add new routes and airports to what is already Europe’s largest network, offering an even greater choice to our 100 million annual customers.”
Chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said: “2014/15 was a record year for Ryanair, as we grew our traffic to 90 million customers and started to dramatically improve the customer experience through the introduction of allocated seating, a second free carry-on bag, our new mobile app and website and our new dedicated Family Extra and Business Plus services, as well as more routes to even more airports, with improved schedules and frequencies.
“We now want to celebrate our 30th birthday in 2015 by launching our new Customer Charter and the second year of our always getting better plan as we grow to carry 100 million customers this year.”