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So-called online travel agents, who arrange airline tickets via the Internet without any distribution agreement, are repeatedly criticized. Ryanair in particular takes strong verbal and legal action against such providers.
Until a few months ago, the carrier had no distribution agreements at all. That has now changed because, for example, we now cooperate with Tui and Kiwi. However, there are still OTAs that use screen scraping to “buy” tickets from Ryanair and other airlines and then resell them to their customers.
Occasionally they advertise in search engines with prices that are lower than those found on the airlines' homepages. Additional services such as seat reservations, checked baggage and other optional items often require significant surcharges that are significantly higher than those charged by the airline. This is exactly what Ryanair is shooting at.
“Ryanair released their April OTA Pirate Survey today (April 10), which once again revealed eDreams as the #1 OTA Pirate for April. eDreams charges consumers €25,24 for a reserved seat for €8 on Ryanair.com (a hidden markup of 216%) and also charges consumers double for Ryanair's 10kg baggage allowance (€39,42 compared to only €19,79 on Ryanair.com). eDreams may be the biggest rip-off OTA pirate in April, but Ryanair's survey shows that other OTA pirates such as Opodo, Gotogate and Mytrip continue to scam unsuspecting consumers with hidden surcharges and made-up "service" fees of up to £65 € per booking, even though there are no such fees on Ryanair.com,” said the low-cost airline in a press release.
