Ryanair Holdings PLC (LSE:RYA) said on Wednesday that online travel agents Booking.com, Kiwi and Kayak suddenly removed its flights from their websites in early December.
In a statement, the airline operator welcomed the move, saying it could be the result of pressure from consumer protection agencies.
In a recent Irish High Court ruling, Ryanair was granted a permanent injunction against Flightbox, which was banned from scraping the airline operator’s content to distribute to travel agents online.
Ryanair said it has also introduced several Know your Passenger customer initiatives including verification options.
The airline operator said the travel agents that have removed its listings only account for a small fraction of its bookings, describing them as ‘pirate’ online travel agencies.
It expects the removal of its flights from these websites without warning to reduce short-term passenger loads by 1% to 2% this month and in December.
Ryanair also expects the move to impact short-term yields as it responds by making more low fares directly available to customers.
However, the budget airline said it does not expect the recent removal of these bookings to materially affect traffic in 2024.
Ryanair said its traffic grew by 9% in December, despite the removal of its listings on certain agent sites, to 12.54 million passengers.
It operated more than 72,500 flights in December. Meanwhile, more than 900 flights were cancelled due to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Ryanair said it continues to make its fares available to so-called 'transparent' online travel agencies such as Google Flights, which it said do not add hidden mark-ups to Ryanair prices.
It said these agencies direct passengers to make their bookings directly on the Ryanair.com website.
“We do not expect this recent removal of OTA Pirate bookings will materially affect our FY24 traffic or PAT guidance," Ryanair said in a statement.
“Ryanair will respond to this welcome removal of our flights from OTA Pirate websites, by lowering fares where necessary to encourage all passengers to book directly on Ryanair.com where they are guaranteed to always get the lowest air fares without OTA Pirate overcharges, fake contact info, or other pricing/refund scams.”