{"id":63295,"date":"2025-09-14T09:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T09:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/63295\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T09:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T09:54:07","slug":"ai-the-catalyst-in-online-agents-mending-fences-with-ryanair-says-oleary-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/63295\/","title":{"rendered":"AI the catalyst in online agents mending fences with Ryanair, says O\u2019Leary \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael O\u2019Leary<\/a>\u2019s relationship with online travel agents is… complicated.<\/p>\n

After accusing them of being \u201cbloodsuckers\u201d and \u201cunauthorised, illegal ticket-tout scams\u201d in 2008, the Ryanair <\/a>boss began a 17-year crusade against websites he has accused of overcharging customers.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Leary has made the case that these agents, by \u201cillegally\u201d scraping data from Ryanair\u2019s website, are akin to pirates \u2013 further placing \u201cinflated air fares and hidden add-ons\u201d on his company\u2019s prices. <\/p>\n

Just this week, Ryanair published data accusing sites such as eDreams of overcharging customers by as much as 125 per cent on seat reservations. <\/p>\n

However, O\u2019Leary has punctuated the week by signing a deal with one of the biggest sites in the sector.<\/p>\n

The low-cost airline announced on Thursday during the company\u2019s annual general meeting that it has given Skyscanner direct access to Ryanair flights on the provision that its customers will have full price transparency of Ryanair\u2019s flight and ancillary products.<\/p>\n

So what changed? <\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence<\/a> got involved. No, some plucky travel agent intern didn\u2019t ask ChatGPT<\/a> to assume the role of an expert negotiator and write a speech to change O\u2019Leary\u2019s mind. Instead. AI threatens the existence of these \u201cbloodsuckers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the media after the AGM, O\u2019Leary said: \u201cThey all recognise that AI is going to come along and eat their business models. Nobody is going to be scrolling on comparison websites.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is the reason why they have come to the table,\u201d he revealed, noting consumers in coming years will just \u201cask Alexa<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, the fast-talking airline chief recognises that AI could be a double-edged sword.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worry that whoever wins in AI \u2013 say Google<\/a> or ChatGPT \u2013 if they start selling 60 per cent our seats… they\u2019ll turn around and try and charge us for distribution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe frontier 30 years ago was travel agency distribution, then it became online travel agents\u2019 distribution that was trying to get in between us and the passenger. Now, in the next decade, it could be AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryanair\u2019s honeymoon with the online travel agents has barely begun and already he has set his eye on the next challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael O\u2019Leary\u2019s relationship with online travel agents is… complicated. After accusing them of being \u201cbloodsuckers\u201d and \u201cunauthorised, illegal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,1463,289,290,2355,297,18,823,19,17,1843,5921,623,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-63295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-amazon","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-cantillon","13":"tag-chatgpt","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-google","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-michael-oleary","19":"tag-open-ai","20":"tag-ryanair","21":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}