This historical and precedent-setting Court ruling is a major step forward in protecting unsuspecting consumers from being overcharged by OTAs, and will help to ensure that Ryanair customers always get the lowest fares, the best customer service, and real time email communications, says the airline.
Ryanair welcomed the judgement of the Irish High Court granting a permanent injunction prohibiting screenscraper Flightbox from breaching the binding Terms of Use of the Ryanair website by using bot technology to unlawfully scrape Ryanair’s website for OTAs.
Ryanair has long campaigned to protect customers from price gouging by OTAs who continue to dupe unsuspecting consumers by unlawfully scraping Ryanair’s website, including by overcharging for air fares and ancillary services, using fake customer accounts, fake customer payment cards and fake customer emails. This can be hugely detrimental to customers who, apart from being overcharged, cannot access their Ryanair bookings, make the necessary security declarations, access refunds, or receive direct email communications (such as online check-in reminders) from Ryanair.
Ryanair’s Dara Brady said: “We welcome this High Court ruling which established that this screenscraper is bound by the Terms of Use of the Ryanair website, which prohibits screenscraping. Ryanair has been granted a permanent injunction to stop this unlawful screencraping of Ryanair’s data in breach of Ryanair’s Terms of Use. The Ryanair website is the only website authorised to sell Ryanair flights.
OTAs have for years relied upon screenscrapers (such as Flightbox), fake customer accounts, single-use payment cards and fake customer email addresses to make bookings on Ryanair’s website in breach of the Terms of Use. This can cause huge inconvenience and expense to customers as often OTAs not only overcharge for fares, bags and seats, but they also block customers from managing their bookings or receiving important flight updates from Ryanair (such as online check-in reminders).
This historic High Court ruling has reinforced Ryanair’s determination to pursue justice for our customers to ensure they get access to the lowest fares, cannot be overcharged by OTAs, and that they have direct access to manage their bookings and to receive up to date flight information.
Ryanair does not have a commercial relationship with any OTA or screenscraper and we strongly object to OTAs mis-selling our flights and overcharging consumers. We encourage our customers to book directly with us through ryanair.com or our mobile app.”
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
