Glorious Victory over German

RNS Number : 0064T

Ryanair Holdings PLC

29 May 2009

 



Glorious Victory for German Consumers over German Screenscraper Website

Ryanair, Europe's largest low fares airline, today (28th May 09) celebrated a glorious victory in the Hamburg Courts which upheld an earlier decision (of the Regional Court of Hamburg) to grant Ryanair an injunction preventing Vtours, an unauthorised ticket-tout website, from scraping Ryanair's website to resell its flights at inflated prices in breach of Ryanair's Terms of Use. 

The Higher Hamburg Court found that the scraping of Ryanair's website to resell Ryanair's flights at higher fares is unlawful in Germany. Vtours now remains banned from reselling Ryanair's flights at inflated prices or with hidden charges to German consumers.

Ryanair allows 'price comparison only' websites to access its timetable and pricing information, for an annual charitable donation of €100, in order to compare Ryanair's guaranteed lowest fares with those of high fare, fuel surcharging, competitor airlines.  Ryanair continues to fight against all ticket-tout websites, like Vtours, which are selling Ryanair flights to consumers at inflated prices. 

Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said:

'Ryanair celebrates a glorious victory for German consumers as it confirms that the European courts support Ryanair's fight to protect passengers against overcharging screenscraping ticket-touts.  These website ticket-touts mislead passengers by unlawfully reselling Ryanair's flights with hugely inflated fares and hidden charges.  Ryanair will continue its fight against these unlawful and misleading ticket-touts in the interest of passengers and today's decision of the Hamburg Courts is a victory for all German consumers and visitors.

'Vtours, like all other cost comparison websites, can enter into a licence agreement with Ryanair, for a charitable donation of just €100, which will allow it to legally provide consumers with genuine cost comparisons and guarantee that passengers are not subjected to sneaky hidden charges'.

Ends.                                           Friday, 29th May 2009

For further information 

Please contact: 

Stephen McNamara                  Pauline McAlester

Ryanair Ltd                               Murray Consultants

Tel: [phone]                 Tel. [phone]

 

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