Ryanair claims victory over agents
Ryanair is rubbing its hands together with delight after managing to stop two online Spanish agents from buying up its tickets.
The airline has fought a longstanding battle with screen-scraping websites but has recently installed technology to stop these agents accessing its site.
The technology, which asks customers to manually copy a series of letters to make a booking, has stopped agents from compiling databases of Rynair’s flight prices.
Ryanair said that as a result, Spanish screenscraper websites Edreams and Bravofly have today stopped displaying the airline's prices and seats on their websites.
"By eliminating unauthorised screenscraping, Ryanair has improved consumer access to, and the response times of, the Ryanair.com website for genuine consumers/passengers," it said in a statement.
"Ryanair welcomes the decision by Edreams and Bravofly to no long display Ryanair’s fares and seats and hopes they will continue to desist from unauthorised screenscraping."
It also dismissed predictions by some in the trade that it would suffer as a result of the loss of business from screenscraping websites (see earlier story) and claimed that, instead, it has seen a rise in bookings this week.
Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said: "Ryanair will continue to implement measures to get rid of unauthorised screenscrapers and travel agents from our website."
by Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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