Italy fines Ryanair 255 million for blocking the sale of its tickets in travel agencies

The Italian Antitrust authority has fined the Irish airline Ryanair with 255.7 million euros for abuse of dominant positionconsidering that it blocked and hindered the purchase of the company’s flights by travel agencies, both online and physical, for two years. The Italian Competition and Market Guarantee Authority (AGCM) has been in charge this Tuesday of communicating the sanction imposed on Ryanair DAC and its parent company, Ryanair Holdings, plc for the events that occurred between April 2023 and April 2025.

“The company, in a dominant position in the offer of national and European air services from/to Italy, has carried out an abusive strategy to hinder travel agencies that use Ryanair flights as input for the offer of tourist services,” the organization explained in a statement. According to the regulator, Ryanair began at the end of 2022 to evaluate different ways to hinder the activity of travel agencieswhich materialized from mid-April 2023 through interventions of progressively increasing intensity.

In the first phase, the airline introduced facial recognition procedures for users of tickets purchased through agencies on their website. Subsequently, at the end of 2023, Ryanair completely or intermittently blocked re-booking attemptsalized by travel agencies on their website, through the blocking of payment methods and the mass cancellation of accounts linked to reservations made by online travel agencies (OTA).

In a third phase, at the beginning of 2024, the company promoted association agreements with OTAs and, later, with physical agencies, with conditions that They limited the possibility of offering Ryanair flights combined with other services. To achieve this, they add, they used “the intermittent blocking of reservations and an aggressive communication campaign directed at OTAs that did not sign these agreements” as a persuasion instrument.

“The proven behaviors have harmed the ability of agencies to acquire Ryanair flights to combine them with the flights of other carriers and/or with additional tourist services, reducing the direct and indirect competition exercised by the agencies themselves and, consequently, the quality and quantity of the tourist services offered to consumers,” the agency concluded. For his part, from Ryanair, the CEO, Michael O’Leary, criticized in April 2024 that a file was opened against the company and described several online travel agencies as “pirates”.