Ryanair has provided detailed evidence of what it claims is illegal screen scaping of its website to the European Commission.
The carrier says it has found websites that are inflating its fares by between 200%-300%.
It has detailed four websites where hidden mark-ups have be added.
The airline added that it has suffered “dramatic slowdowns and outrages” to the Ryanair.com website in recent weeks due to the “illegal and unauthorised” activities of screen scaping sites which it has tried to ban.
CEO Michal O’Leary said: “We have responded to the European Commission’s enquiries by providing them with documentary evidence of this unauthorised, illegal ticket-tout scam being perpetuated on consumers by these screen scraper websites.”
He called on the commission to take action to force screen scrapers to “desist from unlawfully overcharging consumers by 200% or 300%, particularly when they provide no useful service to consumers”.
Categories: Airline, Travel Agent, Tour Operator, Travel Technology
USER COMMENTS
James Millington 30 August 2008, 21:23:41 GMT Missing out on Revenue Ryanair makes significant revenue from selling ancillary and add-on products to consumers who buy air tickets. In most cases revenue from these sales subsidise the air fare and allow them to sell air tickets as cheaply as they do. When another company uses screen scraping to take content and automate the process of completeing sales they lose out on these revenues. This also applies to travel trade using their site to book tickets for customers. If companies want their content, they should negotiate with them for it's use. Ryanir has some very lucrative contracts with ancillary product providers, some of which contain income gurantees that contractually oblige Rynair to act against companies who automate the process of completing booking son their site. Regarding blocking the IP addresses of the companies using screen scraping, I'm sure it wouldn't take long for them to set up from another server or fake their IPs. Seeking a legal resolution should clear up the issue properly and force ISPs and hosts to prevent this kind of activity once and for all. It's worth bearing in mind that most people actually deisgn their sites to make it easy for web crawlers to access their site. SEO is afterall the most efficient way of generating traffic for any business that operates online. The issue of them merely getting better computers is rather ocntentious. Firstly, why should incur cost to benefit other peoples business'. I'm sure it's the case that if a site is slow or un-responsive customers will close their browsers or go elsewhere. Slowing down their site is detrimental to their customers and therefore costs them sales. At the end of the day, it's their site, their content, why should others be allowed to profit from it without their consent?
Steve Sergeant MD, Take Flight Travel 29 August 2008, 13:18:50 GMT Planet? what planet is o,reilly on?
The world has retaillers and wholsalers. The market will bear what the consumer is prepared to pay. Get over it!! He fills his seats and the middleman gets his/her cut! Less empty seats and consumer gets benefit of retailer model that compares prices. Michael needs to wake up and realize that web is the real market place.....
Gary Phillips ar, a 28 August 2008, 13:29:17 GMT Ownership I am with Ryanair on this one. If sites are indeed marking up the fares and using excessive bandwidth, then Ryanair are completely within their rights to stop them.
It's Ryanair that have to handle these passengers, so they should be entitled to control the passsenger relationship from start to finish.
The arguments regarding customer service are invalid. Ryanair have been as successful as they are by cutting costs and by being ultra-efficient, thereby reducing fares - that's what passengers want, and they got it.
Furthermore, there are plenty in this business who feel they have a God-given right to access Ryanair product. They don't.
Steve Sergeant MD, Take Flight Travel 28 August 2008, 15:06:53 GMT Planet? What planet is O'Leary on? The world has retaillers and wholsalers. The market will bear what the consumer is prepared to pay. Get over it!! He fills his seats and the middleman gets his/her cut! Less empty seats and consumer gets benefit of retailer model that compares prices. Michael needs to wake up and realize that web is the real market place.....
Siobh�n Trethewey Account Manager 28 August 2008, 12:40:53 GMT some of these sites can provide a necessary service Does Ryanair really think everyone in the world who flies on Ryanair have a card they can use on their site and the confidence to use it?
Considering their consumer record so far it is probably not too much of a leap to assume Ryanair wish to discriminate against non card holding people...as usual there is not a lot of detail on what services these sites do offer but I'm sure the customers of these sites do not see them as offering "no useful service".
Martino Matijevic CEO, WhichBudget.com 27 August 2008, 21:14:03 GMT Ryanair against the World, not just screenscrapers We (at WhichBudget) never screenscaped Ryanair. We only display who flies where and Ryanair routes are manually entered in our database.
We were thus even more surprised when on 18 January 2008 we received a letter from Ryanair saying “We understand that you utilise an automated system to extract flight information (data) from the Ryanair Website for display on your own website and/or to be supplied to a third party for display on its website. This is an actionable breach of contract.”
Who have they got a grunge with? OTAs? Screenscrapers who do not sell their tickets? Or, anyone even just using the Ryanair name on their website?
Can anyone see what is wrong with sites like www.whichbudget.com displaying their routes and redirecting traffic to them without charging any fees (from them or from the customer) in the process?
Jon Hewson ManagingPartner-Special Projects, VirtuallyThere.ca 27 August 2008, 12:19:47 GMT Just Another Ryanair Tempest in a Teapot Given that Ryanair is not known for being consumer (or employee) friendly, one has to question its reasons for this complaint.
If there are so many gullible (stupid) people who are allegedly prepared to pay up to 300% could it be that Ryanair just wants to deprive others of fees rightfully earned by using their talents to capture these fares OR that others are making more profit than Ryanair does from ticket sales?
The fact that Ryanair has allegedly suffered "dramatic slowdowns and outages" suggests that Ryanair should pony up so more money to obtain sufficient InterNet capacity and buy some decent computers to handle the load. If it can determine that these entrepreneurs actually caused these deficiencies, then it follows that it can inhibit the web sites from accessing Ryanair servers.
If these Third Parties are actually 'touting' it would appear that there is plenty of legislation in place at this time with which to convict these entrepreneurs.
What is so laughable is that Ryanair has contravened the laws of the very people it now seeks assistance from. Hopefully they will remember and treat this complaint appropriately.
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