TUI denies screen-scraping as Ryanair row intensifies

Mystery surrounds the exact nature of Ryanair's self-proclaimed screen-scraping victory over TUI.

The low-cost carrier, which has been actively trying to use courts across Europe to prevent third parties selling its seats, issued a release headlined “TUI UK agrees to stop unauthorised screen-scraping of Ryanair.com."

However, a statement from TUI UK obtained by Travolution questions this accusation by saying: “TUI UK has never conducted screen-scraping.”

It says that the row with Ryanair was over “a service [we used to provide] whereby [we] would book customers’ Ryanair flights through the Ryanair website".

Requests for a clarification of this ‘service’ were not met.

TUI’s statement went on to say that it canned the service as soon as Ryanair raised the issue. The number of people using this service was ‘very small’ and TUI ‘did not feel it was worthwhile contesting legal proceedings on the issue.’

Ryanair’s statement also said that it was reviewing legal proceedings against Thomas Cook over a "fictitious £40 fuel surcharge". A spokesperson for the tour operator told Travolution the incident referred to by Ryanair was caused a system error and had been resolved with the customer, as reported nearly two months ago.

She added that Thomas Cook stopped selling Ryanair flights last autumn.

Comments

Related Articles

• Ryanair drops Expedia content from website
• Ryanair demands £4M from Expedia over deal row
• Ryanair fires 'ticket tout pirates' salvo at third parties
• Multicom seeks support for Ryanair case from new travel association
• EasyJet increases legal threat against scrapers