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I was at a startup event last year where someone that had been very senior and instrumental in Ryanair starting was talking to a small audience (<40 people). He
by RyanHamilton 2y ago
I was at a startup event last year where someone that had been very senior and instrumental in Ryanair starting was talking to a small audience (<40 people). He told the story of how they didn't notice booking.com was "stealing" so much of their profit. To rephrase his words: "We gave those guys free advertising on our site and without us realising they were quickly making more profit per head than we were. Before we noticed and could do anything they had gotten too big to effectively cut off." So it's funny to see this posted and that the frenemy fight continues to this day.
- ricardobeat 2y agoThe “free advertising” has little impact on profits from flight tickets, as most aggregators don’t sell at a huge markup. He’s probably thinking of revenue Booking made from hotel bookings, where margins are way higher - but that’s not really taking away revenue from the flight company (and they get affiliate agreements to earn back a significant chunk of that). > too big to effectively cut off This is also true for the hotel industry, and is part of their moat. Smaller hotels especially can have the bulk of their revenue coming from aggregators, so they can’t drop the platform regardless of how much they like it or not. Building your own marketing channels is hard and expensive.
- dzonga 2y agoskyscanner would list ryanair traffic on their sites. even though they don't make money from ryanair via click referrals but because of the traffic that ryanair brings.