Comment by quokwok
1 day ago
This is an odd story. Ryanair doesn't pay commission, so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to unsuspecting customers. I don't know why Ryanair wants to stamp out this practice (which doesn't cost them anything and brings extra sales), but I don't see why they should be prevented from stamping it out.
Ryanair (and to an extent other LCCs) generally doesn't like ticket sales through resellers because a substantial part of its profit margin comes from upsell of add-ons and partner services during the booking/reservation process
Customer support would be a nightmare - who's responsible? Communication? Refunds? Scams? Dodgy middle men?
RyanAir would get all the negatives from an unhappy customer and restricted ways to fix it.
Any issues at all and it wouldn't take much to make a sale unprofitable.
Thanks, that makes sense.
Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?
> Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?
To give a more general answer than the sibling comment, setting conditions on how a product may be used usually distorts the market, harms buyers, and reduces competition, naturally to the benefit of the one setting the conditions.
For example selling cars that you're not allowed to use for "professional" use, only personal (as Nvidia does with forbidding datacenter use of some of its GPUs, charging extra for it). There was also a self-driving company that forbade buyers from using their cars to create a taxi service, essentially reserving that market for themselves. It may have been Tesla, but I can't find the story right now. In general living in a world where we need manufacturer's permission to do anything is less than ideal.
In this case I'm sure Ryanair would like to spin it as resellers upcharging customers, but by complete coincidence, their practices also prevent someone knowledgeable in all their dark patterns from protecting customers from them by acting as an intermediary.
I guess because travel agencies need to be able to show customers the most economical flights? By prohibiting agencies on their website, they can not give consumers (through their agents) the ability to compare different choices.
It's a restraint of trade issue. You're not allowed to restrain other's people's ability to run a business or earn an income, beyond some reasonable cases.
Like running the only gas station in town and then refusing to sell fuel to a competitor who is trying to build a gas station that wants to compete with you.
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There's also the issue that you're making apples-to-pears comparison if Ryanair shows up in results. While Air France and British Airways have largely equivalent products, Ryanair's is...different.
If you had ever purchased a RyanAir ticket you would understand. You get up charged for everything and have to deselect all the up charges at multiple screens. It is their operating model to sell basically free seats, and profit on upsells. Third parties eliminate a large portion of their upsell pipeline.
Ryanair is cheap, they charge extra for everything. But the tradeoff is you get where you are going for cheap if you avoid all the extras, including bottled water.
The funny part is how most OTAs are pretty awful with addons themselves. I know for a fact that certain OTAs will sell tickets at a loss hoping you trip up on one of their checkboxes, like the 15€ automatic checkin service many offer.
I just now booked a ticket on gotogate, paid 80 euro and received a receipt from ITA airways for 120 euro. They apparently lost 40 euro on this sale, I only had to click "no" on about 18 questions.
Go To Gate are on my ban list personally for awful behaviour when a flight was cancelled.
Most airports have water fountains, even in Europe where they're not as common.
Whenever I fly, I always take an empty water bottle through security and then fill it in the secure zone.
They can be hard to find! It took me about 15 minutes of searching in PMI one time recently…
> You get up charged for everything
No you don't. You can:
> deselect all the up charges
> Third parties eliminate a large portion of their upsell pipeline.
This is nonsense. Third parties cannot provide extra luggage space, priority boarding etc.
A large part of the pipeline consists of insurance, rental cars, hotels, etc.
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> so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to unsuspecting customers
I don't think thats correct, people who use travel agents do so because they like the service or are unable to book for themselves, it's not wrong to offer a service and be paid for it and there isn't any broad evidence that travel agents misrepresent anything.
Customers aren't unsuspecting. They are happy to pay the markup of OTAs to not have to deal with all the booking processes themselves.
Ryanair are idiots to not accept free sales.
The OTAs are idiots for wanting to sell Ryanair flights without gaining a commission.
And the biggest idiots are the Italian court who sticks their filthy fingers in this whole business.