Say what you like about Ryanair - and let's face it, most people do - but is there a more successful travel business out there, if you measure success in terms of profits rather than what second-home-owning Daily Mail readers might say?
The Q3 results today tipped the airline to end the year with a profit of €275m (£240m). In the sector's weakest quarter - October to December - it slashed losses to €11m. I wonder what BA will report when its third quarter results come out on Friday.
For a Travolution audience, the key metric is one that Ryanair doesn't even bother mentioning anymore - all of their business is transacted online at www.ryanair.com. Traffic figures for the site must be phenomenal - especially as all of its passengers also have to visit ryanair.com to check in online.
That's 66 million passengers - call them online customers - this year. I imagine there are very few online travel agents who gets 66m hits a year, never mind 66m bookers. And if things go according to plan, there will be 85m Ryanair passengers in Europe by 2012.
Ryanair.com effectively has a "total transaction value" of €2.4bn for the first nine months of the year, with €1.9bn from seats and €0.5bn from ancillaries.
Ancillaries is a great catch-all phrase which includes checked baggage fees, card charges, as well as the revenues earned for the partnerships it has in place with car hire providers, hotel providers, travel insurance suppliers etc. There is even a dedicated cruise channel on the site.
Unluckily, Ryanair does not break out the ancillary revenues in any way, declining when asked to give Travolution even a top line indication. So we'll never know how many cruise bookings Costa Cruises secures via its deal with Ryanair, nor the terms of that deal.
Most people think that Expedia Inc invented the media model for travel sites, but Ryanair is also pretty good at monetizing its traffic. It's a pity we'll never find out exactly how good.
Martin Cowen
Nathan: You are absolutely right about Ryanair in many respects.
For all the anti-Ryanairisms plaguing the travel trade media, many commentators seems to forget that O'Leary's mastery of PR is coupled with a single-mindedness to run the business HIS way and, until the economic slump which affected every airline, was doing pretty well.
Traffic share figures for Ryanair are available from Hitwise and interestingly it is bitter rival EasyJet who scores higher.
For the week ending Jan 23 2010, Ryanair secured nearly 14% of all traffic in the airline category, almost 7% lower than EasyJet.
Lagging 5% behind Ryanair is British Airways.
Full Hitwise figures available here: http://bit.ly/aOZKP0
Red face: this post is a *Martin Cowen original* - byline missed off initially because I posted it for him.
Ultimately, despite service problems, Ryanair are just so much cheaper and the economic slump that's hit the airlines, lets not forget, has hit us too. Furthermore, when booking via Ryanair we (most people at least) would not expect the remotely luxurious benefits that other airlines may offer, you get what you pay for. If you paid for a bed n breakfast you wouldn't expect the hilton. Next month I'm going on a new show for the BBC that will, I hope, explore issues of a similar nature. Its a show called Be My Guest where two households compete to be the best in British hospitality. My homes too small to be a host so I'm going as a guest, not only is it free of charge but I actually get paid for the pleasure of being a guest for the night in someones home-made guest house, we are allowed to be as demanding as we like and I suppose this will emphasize the question of the cost of hospitality. As with Ryanair, should we really have to pay for good levels of hospitality? Or is this a subjective question considering hospitality is arguably a subjective concept? Should we accept that the more we pay the better hospitality we will receive? Or can this notion be quashed by the gems of hospitality that cost nothing (a smile for example)? (If anyone's interested I think the tv show may even still be looking for people, info@doghouse-media.co.uk is the address I have for them)
I think that one day - besides receiving the "worst sales culture" award - Ryanair should receive the "Promotor of European Unification" award.
After all, Ryanair is for today's young Europeans what the Interrail train tickets were to the youngsters of the 70ies and 80ies - an affordable way to meet people, have long-distance relationships, and study abroad while learning understanding for the other European regions and cultures.
Would web sites like ABC4Trip.eu be possible without Ryanair?
Hardly.
JK