Michael O'Leary's relationship with online travel agents is … complicated.
After the Ryanair boss accused in 2008, “bloodsucker” and “not authorized, illegal fraud fraud”, he launched a 17-year crusade against websites he accused of.
O'Leary has the case that these agents by scratching Ryanair's website “illegally” are comparable to pirates and further place “inflated air prices and hidden add-ons” at the prices of his company.
Only this week Ryanair released data in which websites such as Edreams were charged by up to 125 percent of the reservations of seat reservations by overcathing customers.
However, O'Leary signed the week by signing a contract with one of the largest websites in the industry.
The cost-effective airline announced on Thursday during the company's annual general meeting that Skyscanner has made direct access to Ryanair flights available that its customers will have the full price transparency of Ryanair's flight and by-products.
So what has changed?
Artificial intelligence was involved. No, an intern of Mudery Travel Agent has not asked Chatgpt to take on the role of an expert negotiator and write a speech to change O'Leary's opinion. Instead. AI threatens the existence of these “blood growing”.
O'Leary in conversation with the media after the general meeting said: “You all recognize that Ai will come and eat his business models. Nobody will scroll on comparison websites.
“AI is the reason why they came to the table,” he revealed, noticing that consumers only “ask Alexa” in the coming years.
However, the rapidly speaking airline boss acknowledges that AI could be a double -edged sword.
“I am worried that everyone who wins in AI – Google or Chatgpt – when they start selling 60 percent of our seats … they will turn around and try to calculate for sales.
“The border 30 years ago was the distribution of travel agencies, then it became the distribution of online travel agencies that tried to get between us and the passenger. Now, in the next decade, it could be AI.”
Ryanair's honeymoon with the online travel agents has hardly started and he has already put an eye on the next challenge.