Blog homeThe official statement from Ryanair about their new approach to screenscrapers makes interesting reading.
Ryanair will next Monday (11th Aug 2008) introduce new procedures to cancel all passenger bookings made through screenscraping websites. We believe this is a quicker and more effective way of discouraging this unlawful activity and we hope that by getting rid of screenscrapers we will speed up passenger processing times on Ryanair.com, as well as ensuring that Ryanair passengers are not paying unnecessary handling charges or higher fares to screenscrapers [Source: Ryanair news]
Yikes. Lets look at a bit of background.
What is screenscraping?
The principle behind screenscraping is that you (a business) write a script that navigates around a website pretending to be a user (i.e. the script looks, to the end website, just like a web browser would look). Through this navigation you can learn pricing and availability information (in particular, direct pricing information)
You can either screenscrape in “live time” – i.e. if a user searches on your website, you send a “bot” to the remote website and run the search there - and represent the data back to your site users with a short delay. Alternatively you could check the object website a number of times a day and store the data in a database making the redisplay of the information on your own website much faster….
Why screenscrape?
There are a couple of reasons why an agent or meta search / price comparison website might screenscrape.
To present product to a consumer for purchase
If you don’t have any other connectivity to an airline (like Ryanair) but you want to promote their product (either for sale with a service charge – or just to give the consumer a total sale price) – you could use screenscraping. The bookings themselves are often made directly by the consumer.
To inform competitor analysis
A number of companies, I believe, use screenscraping tools to do analysis on competitors – which can be fed into price setting systems or revenue management tools. (i.e it would not be correct to assume that screenscraping is just used for consumer facing product promotion purposes)
What is the impact of Ryanair’s move against screenscrapers?
Although this looks like a small problem solved with a “sniper shot” from Ryanair there could be a wider impact on “middle layer” travel websites going forward.
Already, TravelSupermarket have had to make a statement saying that they believe their bookings are not going to be impacted:
Product development manager Bob Atkinson said: “We do not take the booking, instead we direct the customer through to the partners’ website where they will only pay the price displayed by the airline, tour operator or other travel provider.” [Source: Travolution]
This looks all fine and dandy….. BUT (and its a big BUT)…. what happens if consumers start to believe that bookings from meta-search websites may not be honoured….. this will send consumers scurrying to booking with supplier websites directly.
Of course, Ryanair would probably be pleased with more supplier website dominance…. but Ryanair’s move should worry any non-supplier sites. Every meta-search, price comparison or travel agent website could be tarred with the same brush and should keep a close eye on developments to this story.
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