Thursday, April 22, 2004

Ryanair: ‘One low-cost carrier will fail this year’

Article
Ryanair has predicted that at least one European no-frills carrier would go bust this year because of an ongoing price war.

The Irish airline said it is expecting its fares to drop by between five and 20 per cent this year, which in turn is likely to reduce its post-tax profits by some 10 per cent.

He reportedly singled out bmibaby, MyTravel Lite, FlyBe, Germania, German Wings and Hapag Lloyd Express as those carriers “most exposed”, adding: “They won’t all go bust but there will be consolidations, acquisitions and mergers.”

'GDSs are not user-friendly interfaces' - 21-Apr-04.: "'GDSs are not user-friendly interfaces' Agents should turn to web-based booking systems like Octopus, says its managing director, Ray Mason, because GDSs are too complex...Despite maintaining its branding on third party websites, rather than white-labelling the product, Octopus bosses say the company is unlikely to start pursuing direct consumer bookings and start competing with websites like lastminute and Expedia. Mr Mason said that the company doesn’t have the advertising spend of B2C websites like Expedia – less than 10% of bookings are direct from consumers, he said."

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