Ryanair takes another step, or rather two, in its personal battle against OTA – le online travel agencies come lastminute.com, eDreams, Kiwi, Opodo e Bravofly selling air flights, vacation packages, hotel stays and guided tours. It is a business that exploded in the last pre-pandemic years, also thanks to the purchasing choices of generation Y, i Millennials, increasingly looking for travel smart solutions able to combine low price, high usability of the service and high experience of the purchased product.
So many of them found themselves booking likes low cost not directly on the official channels of the airlines, but on external sites, well advertised and supported by aggressive marketing campaigns. According to Ryanair this is a wrong choice: these websites would in fact offer higher ticket prices and would jeopardize any refunds in case of problems or flight cancellations. Is this actually so?
PRICE DIFFERENCE: IS THERE, BUT DO YOU SEE?
The Irish company calculates for example that a ticket Dublin-Malaga on its website, including a 20 kg bag, costs 93.98 euros, against the 111.61 of eDreams. On the trafficking Dublin-London, Ryanair estimates a saving of 51% (35.98 euros against 54.31) if you book on its own channels instead of on Opodo.
To make this price difference clearly visible to users, the Irish company has introduced a new tool: the Price checker. In the intentions of O’Leary’s company, the checker will allow customers who have booked through an online travel agent to see how much of the amount paid for a ticket goes to Ryanair and how much to the agency. To carry out the verification operation, just have the booking and flight reference number on hand (if you don’t have it, you can ask Ryanair for it, but attention: the OTAs issue a different numbering, so the “recovery” operation could be neither simple nor immediate) and insert both in the section Price control, which will make visible any price increase applied by online agencies.
While waiting for the newly introduced instrument to become more commonly used, we can venture a couple of predictions: with this move, Ryanair will convince some travelers to book directly on their website; another party, less sensitive to the price issue or more fond of browsing agency portals, may decide not to change their browsing habits.
REFUNDS? BETTER COMPANY
There is another reason why Ryanair wants to bring bookings back ‘home’. OTAs sometimes do not communicate customer data to airlines, making any communication difficult, including a possible refund process for purchased tickets: “If you ask for a refund from OTAs, there is a risk that it will not be paid, even if the agency has received the money from us. Often this money is then used by the same agencies to finance their business “, explains the Marketing and Digital Director of the low cost company, Dara Brady. According to Brady, who speaks of a real one scam – an online scam – to the detriment of travelers, “to date customers are not aware of the risks associated with bookings on channels not recognized by Ryanair”.
THE “VERIFIED” RESERVATION
Ryanair has introduced the Verified Seal, a tool that allows you to have a series of useful information during the booking process. “It is a seal used to communicate to the customer that they are on an official Ryanair channel, that the price they see is the lowest for their flight and that there are no additional markups on products and services,” continues Brady. “The seal also guarantees the customer that if something goes wrong with his booking, he can interface directly with us and obtain any refund from Ryanair”.
“OTAs advertise on Google to always be at the top of the list of results, sure,” he concludes Brady. «However, these companies should also inform their customers of how they use their data, the possibility of a premium price and the potential for problems related to refunds. On the other hand, no such message appears on the websites of the OTAs ».
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