With that unplanned shortfall in mind, it didn’t come as a great surprise when Ryanair this week announced a brand new collaboration with the biggest OTA of them all: Loveholidays, which Ryanair’s Dara Brady says are “legitimate” and “invested in the customer” (read, not pirates). Is it not just a knee-jerk reaction to that 2 per cent drop in bookings? It is “certainly not in response to that”, says Brady.
Whether you believe that or not, it’s certainly a historic moment, as this is the first time that Ryanair has agreed to a formal partnership with an online travel agent. What’s in it for each party? Ryanair gets customer details, assurances of zero mark-ups, and bookings galore. Loveholidays can now offer its customers the full Ryanair inventory, the luxury of dodging the verification process, and a guarantee of the best possible prices.
A truce, of sorts. But what underlies this decision is a cold truth for Ryanair: for the business to continue to thrive (it wants to carry 300 million passengers per annum by 2034, up from 168 million in 2023) it will need package holidaymakers’ bums on its seats. But these are going to have to come from a third party because unlike easyJet and Jet2’s holiday strands, the notion of a Ryanair Holiday would never take off.
They could try, again, sure. And it wouldn’t be too surprising; package holidays are booming as customers seek certainty with their holidays. Jet2holidays has laid on an extra 850,000 seats for 2024. Tui has upped its capacity by half a million, and easyJet holidays (which launched in 2019) has almost doubled its offering to 2.2 million seats.
Robert Johnson is a UK-based business writer specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. With an eye for market trends and a keen interest in the corporate world, he offers readers valuable insights into business developments.
