Why ‘Ryanair Holidays’ would never work

The no-frills airline could never emulate the success of Jet2 and easyJet with their package holidays, says Greg Dickinson

It was a long time coming, really. On a cold winter’s morning, Ryanair announced it had hatched a new plan. Ryanair Holidays. Package holidays on a budget launched due to “incredible demand”.

That was in 2016. Two months later, the Irish airline accused its holiday software provider of “screen-scraping”, canned the entire project and hasn’t tied a blue-and-yellow ribbon around a package holiday since.

Actually, it has doubled down in the opposite direction. Not only does Ryanair not sell holidays, but CEO Michael O’Leary has waged war with the Online Travel Agents (OTAs) which do, branding them “pirates” and “scammers” for their mark-ups, cancellation fees and baggage charges.

Central to Ryanair’s campaign against OTAs is that they do not always pass over accurate customer information, making it hard to issue refunds or flight updates. So last summer the airline introduced an ID verification system for anyone who booked an OTA package holiday featuring a Ryanair flight – angering the OTAs.

The hullabaloo came to a head this month, when leading agents including Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak pulled Ryanair flights from their websites, a move that would reduce short-term passenger numbers by 2 per cent, according to Ryanair. But even a small drop can mean a downturn in profits.

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 a kneejerk reaction to that 2 per cent drop in bookings? Brady insists it isn’t.

Whether you believe that or not, it is certainly a historic moment. This is the first time 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. Loveholidays can offer its customers the full Ryanair inventory, dodging the verification process, and 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 a year by 2034, up from 168 million in 2023) it will need package holidaymakers occupying seats. But these will have to come from a third party because, unlike easyJet and Jet2, the notion of a Ryanair Holiday would never take off.

They could try again, sure. And it wouldn’t be surprising; package holidays are booming as customers seek security. 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.

What they offer, like the best Atol-protected online agents, is a friendly voice on the phone, and reassurance of refunds and support. Ryanair, on the other hand, has built its brand around its no-nonsense approach to customer service. Last year, the airline charged an elderly couple £110 to print their outbound boarding passes when they accidentally brought their return passes to the airport. Rather than apologise to Mr and Mrs Jaffe (aged 80 and 79), Ryanair stood firm. The passengers were “correctly charged” because they “failed to check in online”, it said.

The British public is willing to lower its standards for an hour or two if it means a cheap flight. But will we cut corners for the holiday itself? Ryanair’s service remains bare-bones, and addons are central to the business model: a boarding card reissue costs £20, and a change of name is £115. What would a Ryanair Holiday look like? Surge pricing for hotel sunbeds? Hourly towel fees? Scratch cards on request?

For now, with Booking.com and co baring their teeth, Ryanair has little option but to rely on this latest partnership. Yes, we all like cheap flights – but what we really love is going on holiday.

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j Ryanair’s collaboration with Loveholidays is its first with an online travel agent