The Antitrust imposed on Ryanair DAC, jointly and severally with the parent company Ryanair Holdings plc, a fine of 255,761,692 euros for abuse of a dominant position, from April 2023 to at least April 2025. This is stated in a note from the Authority which, at the end of a detailed investigation, ascertained how “Ryanair has implemented a complex strategy to block, hinder or make it more difficult and/or economically or technically the purchase of Ryanair flights on the ryanair.com website by travel agencies, OTAs and physical ones, in combination with flights from other carriers and/or with other tourist and insurance services is expensive”.
Ryanair’s dominant position
Ryanair – we read in the note – “holds a dominant position in the upstream market of national and European scheduled air passenger transport services to/from Italy, as an input for online (OTA) and physical travel agencies. The dominant position derives not only from significant market shares (38-40% of passengers transported on all routes to/from Italy) and which is continuously growing, but also from numerous other indicators. All these indicators contribute to attributing significant market power and capacity to Ryanair. to act independently from competitors and consumers, also considering the significant distance compared to the performance of the main competing carriers”.
In particular, it emerged that “Ryanair began, at the end of 2022, to examine a series of hypotheses of obstacles to travel agencies, which then materialized, starting from mid-April 2023, in interventions of gradually increasing intensity. In a first phase, Ryanair introduced facial recognition procedures intended for users of tickets purchased through agencies on its website. In a second phase – at the end of 2023, once the investigation had begun – Ryanair blocked completely or booking attempts by travel agencies on their site are intermittent (for example, through the blocking of payment methods and the massive cancellation of accounts linked to bookings made by OTAs. A third phase, at the beginning of 2024, Ryanair imposed partnership agreements on OTAs and, subsequently, Travel Agent Direct on physical agencies, with conditions limiting the ability of agencies to offer the Ryanair flight combined with other services, using the intermittent blocking of bookings and an aggressive campaign as a tool of “persuasion”. of communication towards OTAs that did not sign these agreements (“pirate OTAs”).
Therefore, the Authority concluded that “the conduct described, at least until the integration of the Ryanair API, is suitable and has actually been capable of hindering the sales of the agencies, also affecting the acquisition of Internet traffic by the OTAs. The conduct ascertained, ultimately, has jeopardized the possibility of the agencies purchasing Ryanair flights to combine them with the flights of other carriers and/or additional tourist services, reducing the direct and indirect competition exercised by the agencies themselves and, consequently, the quality and quantity of tourist services offered to consumers”.