TravelMole eWire Comment by Dinah Hatch

A friend once told me that all Ryanair workers, from check in staff to executives, were trained to act in a combative manner, no matter who they were dealing with.

So from the passenger at check in to the potential business partner in a boardroom meeting, everyone gets treated the same – with suspicion bordering on contempt.

This, the theory goes, puts them on the back foot and creates an atmosphere that has them too busy watching their own backs to stop and think what Ryanair’s weaknesses might be.

A colleague I know in the industry echoes this, recalling a meeting he had lined up with a Ryanair middle manager. On entering the meeting, the colleague was not met with a handshake or a professionally-put polite opener but instead asked: “So, what do you want?”

So the budget carrier’s present forthright stance on screenscraping, cancelling all bookings made in this manner, should not come as a surprise to anyone.

While Flybe has attacked the problem of scraping slowing down its site’s efficiency by creating an XML-based Web Services outgoing feed which will allow third party sites to directly access its pricing and booking engine without going through its website, Ryanair has launched all out war on the likes of Irish price comparison website Bravofly.com and German Vtours.

Both have stopped selling Ryanair flights on their sites after successful injunctions were taken out by Ryanair, claiming the scraping infringed copyright, was detrimental to customers who were often not informed of flight changes (since they had not bought direct) and were often made to pay unspecified extra charges (although this last bit did make me laugh, given the ridiculous list of “extras” such as luggage that O’Leary charges for).

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Ryanair is half as bothered about passengers getting charged extra by third party sites and not being informed of flight changes as it’d have you believe.

Having seen a Ryanair big cheese in action at a travel industry conference not that long ago, I’d say the real beef here is that the selling of its flights by third parties through scraping takes away control over how its product is distributed and that is anathema to O’Leary and team Ryanair.

But is this a head-in-the-sand approach? Flybe’s head of sales Stephen Hobday has been quoted as saying he believes Web Services [technology allowing one system to talk to another] will become the “de facto messaging standard” in the future and that it’s the carrier’s obligation to provide this.

Meanwhile, Easyjet has approached the scraping issue by jumping into bed with the GDSs to allow TMCs access to its flights (at £7.50 a sector) and then tying up with travel technology specialists Comtec and Multicom to provide thousands of leisure agents with access too.

I can’t help feeling that the latter two airlines’ approach is a little bit adult than Ryanair’s. They haven’t picked up their ball and gone home with it, simply realised its value and acted accordingly.