Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary: eDreams CEO Is ‘Spoofing His Shareholders’

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary accused his counterpart at eDreams Odigeo of misleading his shareholders when he stated that high courts in Europe have already decided that eDreams Odigeo brands have the right to access the airline’s flights, and that the matter is closed.

“This statement by Dana Dunne is meaningless waffle,” O’Leary told Skift, referring to the eDreams Odigeo CEO. “He is just spoofing his shareholders. eDreams does not have access to Ryanair content unless it unlawfully scrapes Ryanair’s website.”

Ryanair has been battling online travel agencies that scrape its website without authorization, and O’Leary said that courts in France, Italy and Ireland have already “ruled that screen-scraping Ryanair’s website is illegal.”

O’Leary was reacting to statements from Dunne during eDreams’ Odigeo’s earnings call Tuesday, which covered the June 30 quarter.

Dunne said eDreams plans to do what’s in the interest of its customers and shareholders regarding Ryanair, and would also follow European law.

“I should also just state for everybody that there’s been – this matter has been litigated in terms of access of content, and there’s been final judgments from high courts in Europe, so it cannot be re-litigated,” Dunne said. “And according to these rulings, our travel brands are fully within their rights to include all flights and all related public data as part of our offering.”

Court decisions on the screen-scraping issue across Europe appear to be conflicting.

eDreams points to a Supreme Court of Spain ruling that it says found screen-scraping legal.

An eDreams spokesperson said “Ryanair’s statement is not really worthy of a reply with the exception that High Courts across Europe have deemed screen scraping legal.”

However, in December the Irish High Court found that screen-scraping Ryanair’s website was illegal, and many online travel agencies that had been doing it ceased the practice at that time. That contributed to a number of online travel agencies coming to terms with Ryanair to access its fares, but eDreams Odigeo is not among them.

Ryanair Cost eDreams Additional Prime Subscribers

The stakes are high for eDreams Odigeo in its quest to give its customers the ability to book Ryanair flights. Chief Financial Officer David Elizaga said during the company’s earnings call Tuesday that it is facing headwinds in signing up members to its Prime subscription plan, which offers flight, hotel, and car rental discounts in exchange for an annual fee, because it only has had intermittent access to the airline’s flights over the past nine months.

“We acknowledge that customers solely interested in Ryanair flights are less likely to join Prime,” Elizaga said.

That lack of access may have cost the online travel agency, which claims to be the second largest flight seller in the world after China’s Trip.com Group, an unspecified number of Prime members. eDreams reported that it had 6.2 million Prime subscribers at the end of June, and said it is on track to meet its goal for the current fiscal year of 7.25 million.

“Overall, it’s fair to say that excluding this headwind, we would have materially exceeded our target of fiscal ’25 Prime members,” Elizaga said.

O’Leary, though, said “eDreams Prime service is misleading consumers into paying a yearly Prime subscription under the false promise of ‘savings,’ even though they are still overcharging Prime members every time they book flights via eDreams.”

For example, Ryanair claims that eDreams charges its Prime members a 32 euro bag fee for a 10 kg bag on Vueling while the airline only charges 18 euro, for example.

Prime Membership Is Growing

Despite the Ryanair issue, eDreams Odigeo grew its Prime membership roster 32% year over year in the June quarter to 6.2 million. The company said it’s on track to meet its fiscal 2025 goal of 7.25 million Prime members.

eDreams lost 1.2 million euros ($1.32 million) in the June quarter on a net loss basis.

Corrections and Updates: We corrected CFO David Elizaga Corrales’ last name. It is Elizaga, not Corrales. We removed a reference to eDreams’ Ryanair headwind amounting to 1 million Prime subscribers lost. eDreams did not specify a number. We also updated the story to include a comment from eDreams Odigeo, and added information about court decisions.