Ryanair ponders return to package market eight years after failed first attempt
Harry KembleRyanair chief executive Michael O’Leary is considering entering the package holiday market in a bid to attract more customers, raising the prospect of travel agents selling its holidays.
O’Leary has previously dismissed suggestions the low-cost carrier could offer package holidays in the future, but told The Telegraph: “I wouldn’t rule out setting up a holidays division. The holiday product is probably a reasonable way of charging higher fares and yields and for wrapping it into a package.”
But he added Ryanair wouldn’t launch a package-holiday division until it had taken delivery of all 350 aircraft on order from Boeing.
He stressed the new aircraft would allow Ryanair to grow traffic aggressively for some years without departing from its existing model.
However, O’Leary admitted that all-inclusive holidays have proved especially popular this year.
“Accommodation in the Canaries, Spain, Italy and Greece has been appreciably more expensive, and that has maybe pushed more people into these kinds of holiday packages,” he added.
In 2016, Ryanair introduced a holidays programme but terminated it two months later, blaming its software partner of “screen-scraping” its website and reselling its website.
O’Leary conceded that easyJet holidays had been “reasonably successful” since its 2019 launch. However, in the same interview, O’Leary argued easyJet had been forced into the move.
“Holidays are a reasonable way for [easyJet] to try to monetise that scarce capacity at expensive airports. We, on the other hand, are taking lots of new aircraft and still expanding,” he said.
O’Leary described Jet2holidays as a “good, well-run operation” before adding: “There is very little seat-only or scheduled services. And they have no presence out of the UK.”
Ryanair declined to comment further when approached by TTG.
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