Ryanair website to show price comparisons within months
Ryanair will show prices for rival airlines when it re-launches its website this autumn.
Chief executive Michael O’Leary said the airline’s digital innovation hub, Ryanair Labs, will add a price comparison system as part of a series of improvements to the ryanair.com site.
Other enhancements include passenger interaction, special offers and speedier bookings.
Ryanair has written to major airlines to suggest displaying each other’s fares online.
He hopes the move will cut out third-party comparison web sites.
O’Leary said: "When we launch [the enhanced site] later in the autumn we will have a price comparison service available to passengers so that they can come to Ryanair.com, make a booking, see what’s available on rival airlines as well.
"We are keen that the major airlines offer a price comparison feature on each other’s sites. It’s not that we would take a lot of passengers from them – we would supply some traffic to them when Ryanair is full.
"I think it is something the big airlines could and should work together on because I think it makes no sense for third-party price comparison websites out there," O’Leary said in a video statement.
"If the airlines were competitive and had a competent digital offering, those kind of websites shouldn’t exist."
But Cheapflights CEO Hugo Burge said O’Leary’s claims that comparison sites should not exist are ‘extraordinary’.
"Third party meta search sites like Cheapflights.co.uk ensure customers have a transparent view across the market and are thoroughly informed when booking travel," he said.
"Customers put trust in third party meta sites because they know they are independent, so to suggest they are unnecessary is surprising."
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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