Ryanair Further Embracing Business Travel and GDS

Low-cost airline Ryanair is making a move to embrace business travel, and is turning to global distribution systems to take them there.

After more than a decade separated from GDSs, Ryanair shifted its course in early 2014, announcing a partnership with Travelport in March 2014; followed by partnerships with Amadeus (September 2014) and Sabre (May 2015).

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Now, the no-frills carrier notes that it is already seeing an uptick in interest, both from travelers and agents, with Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary looking to double bookings through GDSs, as reported by Travolution.

“This would be reflected in the fact we expect about 10% of our total traffic in five years’ time will be business travellers and we would expect most of those to be coming through the corporate travel agents and GDSs,” he said.”

This statement, among others came at a speaking engagement during Ryanair’s newest partnership with CarTrawler, set to replace the end of a partnership with Hertz in July.

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Looking forward, the carrier expects to push heavily its business travel offerings alongside its website and app launch in October:

“When we launch the website and app in October, you’ll see us aggressively push business travel and Business Plus, which is a fantastic package of services.”

The business travel focus, highlighted earlier last year by Buying Business Travel, includes features like flexible tickets, fast track at select airports and premium allocated seating; all part of the Ryanair target of carrying 112 million passengers by 2019.

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Alongside this push, the focus on business travel is leading to new routes for Ryanair, which is introducing routes in Winter 2015 between Stansted and Gothenburg, coinciding with AstraZeneca’s new headquarters and global research and development center in Cambridge, and an existing facility near Gothenburg.

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