Google and Ryanair are set to team up to produce a new service which will 'revolutionise' the way we buy airline tickets.
Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary said the service will launch before April and it will help customers get the cheapest flights on any route in the world. The news comes after a Sunday interview with O'Leary in the Irish Independent.
According to O’Leary, Google is developing a price-comparison service that will “blow comparison sites like Skyscanner out of the water” when it goes live in late March. Google Flight Search has been around since the firm bought ITA in 2011, but has failed to make much of a dent. It launched in Europe last March, but with limited functionality and it has been missing major low-cost airlines such as Ryanair.
Unlike traditional sites, O'Leary added, Google would not charge airlines for being included in searches and would instead look to sell advertising around the search.
“Because Google, being Google, want to show all of the prices from all of the airlines on display. They don’t want to charge us, they make all of their money out of advertising, they don’t want to have a limited or biased search. They want to be able to say they’ve screened all of these airlines on all of the routes . . .”
© 2014 - Hospitality Ireland Magazine by Enda Dowling
