Lesson Learnt: How the Old War Between Low-Costs and Travel Agents is Coming to an End

Posted by airobserver on November 23, 2011 · 2 Comments 

The low-cost industry industry has reinvented a lot of the traditional ways in which carriers led their business. Among the low-cost carriers which developped in the 90′s (and are still around today) many have been the first to heavily emphasize only sales. The development of the internet allowed for much cheaper sales and reservation system and greater economies of scale for companies betting on passengers volume rahter than passenger’s satisfaction. The most extreme example would have to be Ryanair which, starting 2009 moved even further with an online-only check-in system.

 But, parallel with the focus on online sales, a problem quickly arose for low-cost airlines. If they were to make their websites their main sales platform, this meant they had to avoid customers getting sidetracked from their websites. All the more as, with growing traffic, airline websites themselves became a source of profit – one only has to look at Ryanair’s homepage to know plane tickets are not the only thing being sold there.

 As a consequence, low-cost airlines have been, for the past few years, waging an almost permanent and seemingly never-ending war with travel agents. These were accused of “screen scraping” low-cost websites: automatically recording prices and selling bookings with a commission. As low-cost carriers main selling point is their price, it’s been vital for them to get rid of travel agents. Consequently, Ryanair and easyJet have been waging a ferocious war against them, frequently taking travel agents to court (and winning) over the matter.

 Ryanair even went so far as to arbitrarily cancel tickets sold through screen-scrapers. However, it seems that recently the tide has been starting to turn. First Ryanair lost a case against Spanish screen-scraper eDreams, after a two years trial. And now, the company’s last attempt at getting rid of screen-scrapers is turning against it.

A few days ago, to block automated scraping of its pages by travel agents, Ryanair introduced a new security feature on its website. No more than a capcha like many other websites use, it blocked the booking process unless correctly answered. The feature seems basic, it has been proven to be incredibly efficient. And indeed it was, but maybe not how Ryanair intended it.

 According to various industry specialists, while traffic to the website remained relatively unmoved, business plunged by as much as 80%. This proved that screen-scrapers did indeed have a very good reason for risking the wrath of Ryanair and that the airline still can’t afford to live without them… Needless to say the security feature was taken off the website in a matter of hours. Now what remains to be seen is whether low-cost airlines will radically change their stance on screen-scraping or if they’ll continue acting like it’s really ruining their business.

Filed under AO Article · Tagged with Easyjet, Ryanair, screen-scraping, travel agents, websites