Ryanair’s “cat and mouse game” with OTAs sinks its daily bookings on eDreams by 80%

He cat and mouse game It is a traditional children’s pastime in which one player (the cat) tries to catch another (the mouse). The other participants form a circle and usually sing a song while moving to help the mouse escape. When the cat manages to catch it, they switch roles and everything starts again. A classic school and camp entertainment… that can also be played – and with much more serious consequences – in the offices.

Dana Dunne, CEO of eDreams, refers to this game to summarize the relationship that his travel agency maintains with Ryanair, the airline that sells the most tickets in Spain. Like other references in the sector such as Booking, Kiwi, Expedia or El Corte Inglés, its platform is the object of the Irish group’s crusade in its war against “pirate OTAs”; those whom he accuses of marketing their services without permission and deceiving the consumer with extra costs. However, unlike the previous ones, eDreams has still not signed an agreement with the ‘low cost’ and the impact is palpable in its balance sheet.

“Ryanair has recently stepped up its efforts to block online travel agencies (OTAs), which is increasing instability in the coverage of their content. From mid-September 2025, our average daily bookings for Ryanair have dropped by more than 80%. It is important to highlight that this has affected the acquisition of new clients, but not the loss of our current main clients,” commented the firm’s financial manager, David Elizaga, before its investors in the results conference last Tuesday.

The tug of war between the technology company and the airline is not new; in fact has already escalated to court in a struggle that ran in favor of the first after the Commercial Court No. 12 of Barcelona condemn to Ryanair for unfair competition and denigration against eDreams, following a campaign of false claims launched in 2023 against the agency’s Prime subscription model. Now, the origin of the dispute focuses on the screen scraping that the platforms use to market the Irish banknotes, which has tightened its grip on these techniques.

“From a technological point of view, the relationship with Ryanair has been, for years, a kind of cat and mouse game. They try to prevent us from accessing the content and we overcome the obstacles they put in front of us. They have intensified anti-scraping measureswhich prevents us from offering a good customer experience to our members, and this has become more pronounced since September. There is a possibility that we will be able to overcome these obstacles, as we have done before. However, for this forecast, we have decided to limit the risk, so that the forecasts we have presented to you today do not depend on us overcoming these obstacles as in the past,” Dunne acknowledged during the market meeting.

This instability and the cost of the investments planned to implement its Prime subscription business – with monthly payments, new markets and train tickets – have led it to trim your long-term financial guidance with greater reductions in cash Ebitda for fiscal year 2026: 155 million euros, 28% below the current consensus. This turn, along with fear about the margins, was received on the trading floors with a collapse of its shares of 35% in this Wednesday’s session despite meeting revenue and profit estimates.

In this scenario, investors emphasized the group’s policy to conclude or not an agreement with Ryanair. For Dunne, who does not close the doors to negotiation, everything depends on not crossing three red lines.: “The first criterion – to value the deal – is, obviously, the value for the shareholder. What options do we have and which one generates greater value for the shareholder compared to the others? We make an objective comparison. The second criterion focuses on the customer experience, and I think I already explained why it is so important to us. The third refers to compliance with European regulations.”