When Scrapers Get Scraped: eDreams Moves Against Tryp.com in Prime Fare Dispute
Photo Credit: A Ryanair plane. Pixabay / tpicture
Skift Take
When online travel agencies can't get permission to access a major airline's flights, particularly its lowest fares, they often engage in a cat-and-mouse game to get them. The outcome can have dire consequences for smaller OTAs, and adversely impact the larger ones, as well.
For online travel agencies large and small, getting access to the cheapest flights is the holy grail.
Denmark-based Tryp.com, which bundles flights and hotels into packaged holidays, knew major airlines and online travel agencies wouldn’t offer it special deals because of its small size — so it had to get creative.
In November, Spain-based eDreams Odigeo, which has been engaged in its own pitched battle with Ryanair for years over the unauthorized scraping of the airline's website, demanded that Tryp.com pay it a 95,000 euro ($110,000) penalty for booking flights on eDreams' websites that it claimed violated its terms and conditions.
The basic facts are not in dispute.
eDreams offers a subscription service called Prime, which offers customers discounts on flights and hotels in exchange for paying an annual fee of approximately 96 euros
