Ryanair agrees ‘landmark’ deal with Travelfusion

European budget carrier Ryanair has reached a deal with flight aggregator Travelfusion to become an “approved OTA aggregator” for the airline.

The partnership will allow Travelfusion, which specialises in providing content from low-cost airlines to travel agencies and TMCs, to provide Ryanair fares with “full price transparency”. Although Ryanair has confirmed to BTN Europe that it will not include the airline’s lowest fare types.

It will also allow those booking Ryanair flights through Travelfusion’s clients to access their bookings through their myRyanair account without needing to complete Ryanair’s customer verification process, which has previously caused problems for business travellers booking through TMCs and OBTs. Travellers will also receive flight updates directly.

Many corporates were left unable to book Ryanair flights through travel management companies when Travelfusion stopped providing the airline’s content last autumn following its campaign against third party aggregators.

Since then Ryanair has signed a series of partnerships with leisure travel platforms and with distributors in the corporate space including Kyte in March, and now Travelfusion. Kyte’s deal also does not include Ryanair’s lowest fares.

Meanwhile, a direct connect with booking platform Concur is also due to go live in Q4 this year.

Eytan Bicaci Baruh, vice president commercial at Travelfusion, called the partnership with Ryanair a “landmark agreement”, as it would allow the tech firm to offer the “very best value and richest content offering possible to our customers”.

“We look forward to working together to make Ryanair fares and ancillaries available to all approved agencies within our global network of connected OTAs, OBTs, TMCs and tour operators,” added Baruh.

“This agreement marks a true milestone in Travelfusion’s continued journey to achieve global coverage in flight content and offer the best possible value, ancillaries and functionality to our customers.”

Ryanair’s chief marketing officer Dara Brady added: “We are thrilled to be partnering with the world’s largest flight aggregator, Travelfusion. This exciting new agreement will see Travelfusion authorised to offer Ryanair’s low fare flights to their global network of connected OTA partners providing full price transparency.”