By Friday, July 19, 2024
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Ryanair wins a landmark case against Booking.com, with a Delaware court ruling in favor of Ryanair’s claims of fraud and unlawful screenscraping, causing economic harm.
Ryanair Holdings Plc announced today, Friday, July 19, that the Delaware District Court jury has delivered unanimous verdicts in their favor. The jury ruled that Booking.com violated the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, intentionally defrauding Ryanair and causing economic harm through unlawful screenscraping activities. The court also dismissed all counterclaims from Booking.com, including allegations of defamation, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices.
These rulings confirm that Booking.com engaged in illegal screenscraping of Ryanair’s website with fraudulent intent. Ryanair has consistently criticized the deceptive tactics of OTA pirates like Booking.com, who use intermediary software to scrape information from Ryanair’s site. This data is then used to overcharge consumers for Ryanair fares and services while concealing these anti-consumer actions by making bookings with fake customer emails and payment cards.
Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary said:
“Ryanair and our customers warmly welcome yesterday’s unanimous jury ruling in the Delaware Court, which comprehensively (found in favour of Ryanair, proving that the travel industry giant Booking.com had illegally “scraped” Ryanair’s website, and did so with an intention to defraud both Ryanair and ordinary consumers, which was in breach of the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. We expect that this ruling will end the internet piracy and overcharging perpetrated on both airlines and other travel companies and consumers by the unlawful activity of OTA Pirates like Booking.com.
It is unacceptable that global giants, like Booking.com (mkt cap $133 billion), have been engaged in these illegal and deceptive practices for many years with the intent to defraud both Ryanair and consumers. Ryanair has fought to protect consumers and ensure that they have direct access to Ryanair’s low fares, and our low-price ancillary services without OTAs, like Booking.com and others, inserting themselves into this relationship in order to overcharge unsuspecting consumers who believe they are booking directly with Ryanair, but in fact are being duped into booking (at inflated prices) via these OTA Pirates like Booking.com.
We also welcome the Delaware Courts rejection of Booking.com’s counterclaims that they had been defamed by Ryanair when calling them an OTA Pirate. We hope these Delaware Court rulings will now see an end to OTA Pirates illegally screenscraping travel websites like Ryanair.com, and will force consumer agencies across the UK and Europe to finally take action to outlaw this illegal screenscraping and over charging of consumers for flights and ancillary services.
This ruling is a great victory for low fare air travel, and it’s a great win for the travelling public as well. We sincerely thank the District Court of Delaware and the jury for their ruling, which completely vindicates Ryanair’s case against Booking.com on behalf of our customers. We now call on Booking.com’s vastly overpaid CEO Glen Fogel ($46m pay in 2023) that he and his company will cease scraping the Ryanair.com website and stop overcharging consumers with inflated air fares and ancillary services, now that Booking.com has been found to be in breach of the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.”
