How On The Beach and Ryanair went from furious legal rows to being best of friends

Last year On The Beach and Ryanair were facing off in court and in the press. This week, their CEOs were posing with inflatable ice creams in a rowing boat in sunny Manchester. It’s amazing the difference that sitting around a table can make.

Ryanair's CEO Eddie Wilson came to the travel company’s offices near Piccadilly station on Thursday to announce the low-cost airline’s flights are now on offer as part of On The Beach's package deals.

The Irish airline had been locked in a furious row with On The Beach over whether or not it could sell Ryanair flights. Ryanair has accused online travel agents of being “pirates” for selling flights unofficially, meaning there could be confusion over contact details and refunds when there were delays or cancellations. The companies even went to court, with On The Beach winning a £2m victory in December.

But in February the companies announced they had reached an agreement, and this week On The Beach chief executive Shaun Morton and Mr Wilson met staff at the package holiday firm’s Adair Street to announce Ryanair flights are from today available as part of On The Beach’s holidays.

From a consumer perspective, that means people can book through On The Beach and then get all their flight information directly from Ryanair, avoiding any of the confusion or disputes. It could also lead to more holiday options for On The Beach customers.

Mr Morton and Mr Wilson were all smiles - no surprise, as this is a positive outcome for both of them. But I wanted to hear what had helped bring these two fierce rivals together.

First I spoke to Mr Morton, who told me: “We've always booked Ryanair seats for our customers as part of our package holidays, but that journey has not been without friction. And I'd say particularly over the last 12 months, there’s been friction there and us and Ryanair - we have had a dispute about that.

“And what's really positive here is that this dispute has been resolved by us both getting around a table and coming to a sensible commercial arrangement, rather than it being decided by a judge in a courtroom. That’s really positive.

“What this arrangement does is provide a perfect blueprint for how airlines and travel agents could work together. It's free and fair access to their seats in a very transparent way.”

Mr Wilson explained there had been a “grey area” where online travel agents resold Ryanair flights to their customers. That meant Ryanair did not have direct access to those customers' information, which was held by the agent - so if there were any flight changes, delays or cancellations, there could be confusion about what would happen.

He said: “So when we’ve got a regularised relationship here, as we do with On The Beach, it means that they can sell those seats and package it onto a package holiday customer.

“The consumer knows who they're flying with, who's got responsibility for what in terms of refunds and provision of information.

“It's really important to us, because cleaning that up if things go wrong is hugely expensive, and there's a lot of reputational damage that we had prior to this.”

On The Beach is one of six online travel agents (OTAs) with whom Ryanair has signed formal agreements. Mr Wilson said Ryanair - led by outspoken group chief executive Michael O'Leary - would still pursue any other travel agents who sold its flights without permission. He said bluntly: "The ones that we don't have a relationship with, it’s very simple, they are misselling our flights."

Mr Morton said the deal would help On The Beach to access Ryanair’s massive network. The airline already serves 170 destinations from 22 UK airports, and last year carried more than 180 million passengers across its European network. Mr Morton added: “That will help us provide some real choice for customers in the UK.”

And he said: “Ryanair represents a huge amount of the seat supply that we would like. This is going to make things more straightforward for customers, operationally more straightforward for us, and it means we can focus on doing what we want to do - which is providing the holidays to our customers.”

And Mr Wilson said the deal could help On The Beach offer more flight choices to passengers from Manchester and beyond. He said: “We've got a relationship here, whereby they're able to package (with Ryanair) the lowest fares, best on-time performance, and the widest network with the most frequencies.

“So like if you think about it from their point of view, they might actually be selling a holiday and people don't want to go on the first flight out of Manchester - well invariably, to the popular destinations, we might have three, four or five flights throughout the day, so there’s much more choice in how they package those as well.”

A final note on this celebratory day. Michael O’Leary has always enjoyed posing for “comedy” photographs. And On The Beach helped keep that proud Ryanair tradition alive - after the event, they sent over a picture of both CEOs in a rowing boat, with Mr Wilson pretending to eat an inflatable ice cream.

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