Back in August we reported about Ryanair being the first carrier that no longer accepted reservations through screen scrapers. Screen scrapers are ‘crawling’ supplier sites such as Ryanair.com to retrieve fares which they then publish on their own website, often including an additional markup.

Per August 11, the airline threatened to cancel all bookings made through these channels. Also, Ryanair published an extensive list ‘naming and shaming’ some of the major online travel agencies.  Next to this change in their approach, Ryanair also filed a complaint against European Authorities in their efforts to prevent screen scrapers to search for fares and distribute them to their clients as having direct access to Ryanair fares.

Main purpose of these efforts for Ryanair was improving site performance (which had problems with the amount of search queries requested) , improve customer services and increase their direct sales.

Now, almost three months passed, Ryanair is stating that the performance of its consumer website has ‘improved significantly’ since it initiated its efforts to ban screen scrapers. Also, since last summer Ryanair has established better connections with some third parties. The number of online agencies to screen scrape Ryanair.com has dropped significantly due to Ryanair’s efforts and advances in technologies on both supplier and reseller sides.

According to a Ryanair spokeswoman (source; travolution): “The performance of the Ryanair website has improved significantly as the number of screenscraping websites unlawfully accessing the site has reduced.”

It would be interesting to see what the results of their efforts are in terms of sale. Did bookers who use to book through third party agencies now made their bookings directly at Ryanair.com or did they stick to their favorite online travel agent? Do online agencies really have a solid and loyal user base  who just go for another carrier or are they looking for their favorite carrier elsewhere?

related items

• Ryanair cutting of screenscrapers
• Ryanair terminates Expedia exclusive agreement
• Ryanair signs partnership with priceline’s booking.com

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