Ryanair has partnered with corporate travel distributor Kyte
to expand the carrier's network offerings to Kyte's customers, Ryanair
announced Wednesday. The deal means Ryanair will provide content to corporate
travel partners without the need for a global distribution system, according to
the carrier.
The carrier late last year roiled the corporate travel
community when its content disappeared from non-GDS airline content aggregator
Travelfusion, which many travel agencies as well as corporate online booking
tool Concur had used to access Ryanair content. The cause of the outage on
Travelfusion officially remains unknown. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary speculated
on an earnings call in late January that it could have been related to new
consumer protection laws in Ireland, the carrier’s own customer verification
initiatives or to the fact that Ryanair had active litigation against an online
travel outfit called Flightbox, accusing the outlet of screen-scraping Ryanair
content and selling it at a mark-up. That suit has since been settled in the carrier's favor.
Ryanair more generally has stated that it has had no
relationships with such aggregators or with online travel agencies. It does
have limited relationships with GDS providers Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport,
but excludes access to the carrier's lowest fare classes.
In the wake of the Ryanair blackout in certain corporate channels, BTN
portfolio mate The Beat reported that Concur took the rare step of initiating
a direct connect to restore access. Tech-first corporate agency Navan also
restored access but has not commented on how.
The relationship with Kyte is the first of its kind for
Ryanair, yet it will still be limited to so-called "GDS parity," meaning Kyte will support full content, ancillaries and bundles but, like Ryanair's GDS agreements, will not provide access to the carrier's three lowest fare classes, according to a Kyte spokesperson. The connection should go live this month, according to Ryanair, but an exact date was not available.
In a press statement, Kyte co-founder and CEO Alice Ferrari
said: "I'm extremely proud that Ryanair has chosen Kyte as their first
official non-GDS distribution partner," also noting that Ryanair's content
via the Kyte channel will be made available on partner desktop solutions, like
AirGateway.
Ryanair currently operates about 3,600 flights daily across
more than 235 destinations, according to the carrier.
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This article was updated Thursday, May 7, at 7:15am Eastern Time