is ryanair serious?
 

news from a travel website:

Ryanair cancels bookings by 'evil' agents - Travel Trade Gazette

Had a call yesterday from a friend who owns and runs a large and very prosperous independent travel agency with a large and very prosperous client base...they ring him when they want to travel, because they haven't the time or inclination to wade through the airlines' laborious websites, with their repetitions, unnecessary "registration" routines, and constant attempts to trick one into buying something you neither want nor need.

He charges them £15, which they are happy to pay, for making bookings on low-cost airlines, and sorting out the optimum itinerary/cost for them, using whichever airline it takes to do that. He pays for the travel, and politely invoices his clients who pay withn 30 days. He also sorts out hotels, car hire etc, often using the airline's suggested supplier, but not always.

Ryanair has now contacted his clients directly, cancelling the bookings he has made for them on Ryanair. All they have done is ring him, sympathise, use some very choice kanguage about Ryanair, send him the money refunded by Ryanair, and ask him to rebook them on another airline, hotel, car hire firm or whatever was cancelled by Ryanair.

Which he has done. Not one of them has indicated that they will succumb to Ryanair's tactics; they just won't use Ryanair again, because they will continue to use my friend to arrange their travel, and he is not allowed to book and pay for their seats on Ryanair.

There is only one loser and that's Ryanair. Who cares?

BTW 1 We buy travel for our staff using a company card. I guess this means that we will have to stop using Ryanair, too. Oh what a shame. There's plenty of others.

BTW 2 One or two of my friend's clients said they are thinking of legal action for brach of contract against Ryanair, just for the fun of it, but that they probably can't be bothered. As most of them said, you don't sue crooks, you just give them a wide berth.

Embedded in the press release is the real reason for it.

I had a problem getting my boarding card from the Ryanair a couple of weeks ago. It was very irritating. I would suspect FR is prepared to take the short term hit for the sake of keeping the website working faster.

I dislike ryanair, they are wrecking this once great industry.

however, I think this is a good idea.

I typed in my car insurance details onto on of these compare sites (confussed.com or something like that) and the cheapest Quote i got, including one from my current insurer was THREE times what the individual companies websites were saying.

So if these airline comparison sites are the same...

Gobonastick

I am pretty sure my friend said that his clients had been contacted....but I could be wrong.

Thinking about it, he would give the client's contact details to receive updates about the service, so that's whom Ryanair would contact, I would have thought.

But I don't know for sure, and he's out!

PS Surely, if so many people are accessing your information that your website is suffering, the solution is to improve the website, not kick off a lot of your customers. To most of us, a screenscraper is a marketing tool that some else pays for.

Website efficiency is a red herring. If you've got volume problems, you can upgrade the iron, or you can turn off the volume. If they're trying to do the latter, the least efficient way to do so is killing the tickets issued: the volume doesn't drop immediately, ill-will is generated, and you'll have costly collateral damage. Screenscrapers don't have an infinite number of IPs, and blocking IPs, limiting the number of daily attempts, or just increasing the delay between requests will all work better than cancelling a bunch of tickets.
On the other hand, if I were running a carrier that saw a sudden spike in fuel prices, and wanted to shake the lowest-paying customers that were suddenly unprofitable, I might be tempted to pull such a trick.

DingerX

Nail - Head :ok:

yes this is another trick to raise money for MOL as many will now have to rebook with ryanair at a higher price if the rest of their plans depend on that flight. They will join the millions who would now never book with ryanair again.

The long term winner in my view is going to be easyjet. For all their faults they do make a effort to look after PAX. MOL seems to think their is a just more PAX to be had ones you have messed up the plans of the current ones. PAXs talk and ryanair will get hurt by this long term.:8

Southwest blocks too
 

In the US Southwest blocks sites like kayak and orbitz from listing their flights or prices. Kind of interesting because all Kayak does is pass you through to another site to book. You want to check a Southwest price you need to go the company site.
Pretty sure they allow travel agents to book but maybe not.

20driver

They are making a very ill-informed business decision if they think that the future of internet business involved limiting a consumer's choice, rather than permitting screenscrapers to expand choice.

Consumers typically hate being directed as to what to do - which is why the iPhone is so successful as a product compared to the rather more limited alternatives.

While I am sure that someone within the business truly believes that the increased revenue from forcing the website to be used and raising ancillary revenue exceeds the lost revenue from prohibiting these websites, I do believe they have miscalculated consumers' motivations for using agents as opposed to direct bookings.

You cannot force consumers to be luddites and use only your distribution channel, when greater choice exists elsewhere.

(for those who know what I am talking about - remember Porter wrote about pre-internet distribution channels in 5-forces...)

Look, Ryanair is just what it is.... a Piky/Essex moving machine.

Cruel, racasan, cruel..........















.....but fair.

Airlines right now... LCC's and Legacy carriers have to do whatever they can to increase profit and ticket sales... :ok:

.....Like allowing the use of inflight mobile phones - Ryanair are launching the service from next week on 10 flights out of Dublin, so what will the access fees and charges be for that then?

Not a peep on their website about it...

Re-Heat,

My view is that in the long term this might not be a bad decision.

The fact that FR are a generally undesirable bunch shouldn't be confused with the fact that its a poorly run business becuase it isnt!

In terms of Porters 5 forces the interesting factor is the often low buyer power based not only on the low prices offered but the number/variety of routes serviced.

We have some friends who go to Ireland quite regularly and so when they book they either have to book via a travel agency or with us as they HAVE NO COMPUTER. What arrangements has Mr O'Leary made for people who can't use a computer as they DON'T HAVE ONE ???:confused:

NOW THAT'S SOMETHING TO APPLAUD (IN ALL THE NEGATIVE MEANING)
Wow. I tend to think things can't surprise me anymore. There's always 'room for improvement'.
Yes, websites like SkyScanner etc would still use their site unless RYR seriously play with barring these.

I am like many others, using RYR because I have to on some routes and it's still reasonable TOTAL cost. They might be forced to include basic 'tax' on their search result screens, but there's more to come, naturally.

As for cancelling tickets lawfully bought on their website because of 'new policy', IT'S F:mad: LUDICROUS.
Does it mean I won't be able to book ticket only for my friend if she doens't have 'right' card and that I don't have to go over details with her? Seems so.
No agency, no screenscraper, just plain old passenger buying for friend/family.
Screw them idiots.

DingerX, you may be right regarding RYR's intentions on top of obvious effort to monopolise the market furthermore. I use word EFFORT as all they do is actually damage their reputation even more and will lose out on the market of people who log on to screenscraper and book first reasonable trip in line with their wishes either directly through the website or visit such carrier's page directly. They think it'll put people off using search websites and go directly to RYR only?? Dream on. Might work on small number of pax.

I shop for the best option for me. It won't stop me checking out SkyScanner and RYR itself if the info's not available.

What they did/are doing, is actually discriminating against people whose flights were booked on their behalf by somebody else. Do they really expect 20-odd group of seriously senior citizens to book the flights each for themselves when going on care home's annual holiday to Med?? OR whatever case it may be.

How do they actually sort the thing with one person booking more pax on one booking?? That should work. Are they going to look for the same name on card and of one of the passengers on the booking??

I'd gladly see some travel agency that got hit to do a lawsuit for damages or discrimination. Individuals won't bother. They'd just take the hit, swear and go on with life, appropriately changing their opinion and shopping behaviour.

One of many malicious disgraceful moves.
Just like that thing with sneakily introducing luggage charge under 'fair luggage policy', ie only paying when having luggage and increasing max weight. Then, after half year, quietly removing 20kg, going back to 15 but without such hooray. Recently, 'desk checking fee' etc. OK, if I pop in to see family, I may find it useful to skip one of the queues for desk check-in by printing boarding pass.
They advertised it as 'skip the queue, check in online if hand luggage only.
I don't really give a toss about having 'priority' etc (I travel alone), all I want is to avoid people pushing about and forward like bloody cattle in the departure lounge. Now they 'enforce' online check-in by charging checking in person, which is, 'strangely' enough, the only option when having hold luggage..

Well, maybe that's why some call it 'cattle class' (locos or economy with legacies).

There are travel agencies booking on behalf of people either because of convenience or pure necessity (old, IT illiterate, 'never done that', no PC, no card that is accepted, etc). They get RYR business in and may keep it free as part of other services or charge something, still win-win situation.

I hate to state the obvious but ... you are railing against the wind. MoL and RYR have made a fortune by not caring about anyone other than themselves. It may happen that in the future life will change and they will find that their attitude no longer works. I doubt it very much. They have no reason to care about anybody and will continue to not care. Use them on their terms or don't use them.

For the record, I loath everything they do BUT I admire them more highly than I can say for their clever exploitation of the market and for continually doing what no one expects them to do.

Only used RYR once, never again! I've been around in this industry since the mid 60s, and I have never experienced such a crap pikey operation like this lot. Have used Southwest lots in the US, great operation. Easy is a regular LGW/GVA/LGW and excellent for the money. Met MOL way back when he was sidekick for TonyR, prat then, TonyR was a Gentleman of the 1st order, he must be turning in his grave!

To quote his national slang "MOL the feckin goob****e can go **** imself sideways, his gums do bleed every 28 days, just coz he talks like one!"