Ryanair drops out of top Google flight search results after website overhaul

Posted on by

While Ryanair continues its makeover from brash and uncompromising to focused on customer service, including a more appealing and user-friendly online booking system, it appears a botched overhaul of its website could be losing the Irish airline custom.

Since the full relaunch of its website earlier this month, Ryanair has all but vanished from country destination flight searches on Google.

According to data from web search analytics firm Intelligent Positioning, on millions of searches made each month for flights to European destinations where Ryanair was the first airline to appear, such as Romania and Belgium, it is no longer in the top 100 results.

The Ryanair website, once found, now allows users to book using as few as five clicks – a major departure from the old site where customers had to negotiate security checks and opt out of buying extras before booking a flight – but the airline appears to have omitted some basic precautions in the relaunch.

Sam Silverwood-Cope, director of Intelligent Positioning, said: “They’ve ignored the legacy of the old Ryanair.com. It’s quite startling. They are doing it just before their busiest time of the year.”
A change in web addresses without proper redirects means many results found by Google now simply return error pages, he added. “Unless redirects get put in pretty soon, the position is going to get worse and worse.”

Ryanair said it was confident that it was a temporary blip and the brand would sustain bookings. A spokesman said: “As part of our evolving digital plans, we will have more helpful content for customers on the website and this will sustain first-page rankings on key search terms going forward.

“Various Ryanair.com internal and external linked pages are migrating to the new site. Until the site settles down there will be a temporary drop in organic search positions on certain key search terms.”

He said the update had been well received by customers. “We are very pleased with the level of bookings since the new site went live. We anticipate that it will take a week or so for things to bed down properly.”

Ryanair’s new chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, will have some knowledge of the negative effects of even a small shift in Google rankings. At Moneysupermarket.com, his previous employer, shares dropped 15% last July when the firm fell a few places in the results for car insurance.

While Ryanair was one of the first websites to only take online bookings, it has had an ambivalent relationship with the web. In January, it finally agreed to sign up to Google’s developing flight search tool, with chief executive Michael O’Leary admitting: “If you need information, your first port of call is Google.”

Having long derided users of social media, O’Leary recently became an enthusiastic convert to Twitter as a way to chat with customers.

The airline is engaged in another step of its court battle against European travel websites On the Beach and Billigfluege over their use of screenscraping technology to access information on flights from Ryanair. The websites are appealing against rulings in Ryanair’s favour.

Silverwood-Cope pointed out that comfort for Ryanair could come from the experience of the Guardian which briefly saw traffic dip and its search ranking drop after changing its website domain from guardian.co.uk to theguardian.com last year.

theguardian.com

Ryanair posts first third quarter loss in three years

Posted on by

Ryanair has reported its first third quarter loss since 2010 as it cut fares to boost demand over winter.

The low cost carrier made a loss after tax of €35.2m (£29m) for the three months to December 31 compared to a €18.1m post-tax profit during the same period in 2012.

Although airlines usually make losses over the winter, it is the first time Ryanair has made a third quarter loss since 2010.

Passenger numbers during the period increased 6pc to 18.3 million but revenue dipped to €964m from €969m previously as revenue per passenger fell 6pc.

The carrier, which issued two shock profit warnings in the autumn, grew ancillary charges – which include food and drink onboard – but fares declined 9pc.

Ryanair is facing growing competition from expanding low cost rivals such as Vueling and Norwegian and has also admitted easyJet “wiped the floor with us” by introducing customer service improvements much earlier.

The airline is still guiding towards full year profits of around €510m – a figure which was revised down twice following profit warnings in September and November.

Ryanair chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said the third quarter loss was “in line” with previous guidance.

Mr O’Leary, who is known for his colourful outbursts, is taking a step back from the public spotlight as Ryanair introduces a more corporate image. It has rolled out a raft of customer service improvements including, most recently, the introduction of fully allocated seating across all of its flights.

Michael Cawley, deputy chief executive, admitted that Ryanair had been “beaten by the competition”, speaking to Radio Four’s Today Programme on Monday morning.

Daily Telegraph

Cash-strapped airline Alitalia rejects Ryanair’s collaboration offer

Posted on by

Alitalia has rebuffed an offer from Ryanair to feed passengers into its long-haul routes and help boost the Italian carrier’s profitability.

“Alitalia … has its own strategy, an industrial plan, a fleet and its own crew that allow it to have the necessary passenger traffic to feed its international and intercontinental connections leaving from the hub at Fiumicino airport,” Alitalia said in a statement.

Budget airlines are usually based further from city centers, and Ryanair wanted to leverage the new routes it has secured from Rome’s Fiumicino, which is also Alitalia’s hub.

“Ryanair believes that its offer to feed Alitalia’s international hub at Fiumicino, and seek opportunities to work together and help Alitalia to recover, can help new investors and Alitalia’s management in returning to profitability and reliability,” Ryanair said in a statement.

Alitalia, the target of a government-engineered €500m rescue plan, said it had its own restructuring plan in place and offered similar prices to Ryanair, suggesting the two firms were not natural partners.

“At hub airports in all developed countries, cooperation is avoided between hub carriers and low-cost airlines. It is not by chance that low-cost airlines find space and operate in small airports dozens of kilometers from the cities,” it said.

Italy’s flag carrier has made a profit only a few times in its 67-year history and is running out of cash again.

The deadline for shareholders to subscribe to a 300 million euro capital increase, intended to buy the airline time as it looks for a cash-rich foreign partner, expires on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, Alitalia’s board approved a revised business plan, promising deep cost cuts to make the struggling airline more competitive.

Reuters

Ryanair blames lower fares for latest profit warning

Posted on by

Ryanair is on course for its first fall in profits in five years, saying that increased competition and a weak economic backdrop will force it to cut fares by up to 10% for the winter months.

The budget airline issued its second profit warning in recent months after average fares fell 2% during the first half of the financial year. It said fares were likely to fall by up to 10% by the end of the financial year to 31 March 2014, despite slightly higher forward bookings.

The Irish budget airline cut its full-year profit guidance to around €510m (£432m) from €570m, “due entirely to this lower fare environment”. It would be Ryanair’s first fall in profit since 2009.

“People have less money to spend,” the airline’s chief financial officer, Howard Millar, told Bloomberg. “We had a strong August, since then we’ve started to see a weakening environment.”

The bad news sent its shares down 10% and hit the wider airline sector, with easyJet and British Airways group IAG shares both sharply lower.

Ryanair had already hit investors with a surprise profits warning in September, cautioning at that time that profits might fall at the lower end or below its previous range.

Ryanir’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in the same month that he recognised the need to address the “abrupt culture” at the airline, known for its no-frills service and additional charges.

“We should try to eliminate things that unnecessarily [annoy customers]. I am very happy to take the blame or responsibility if we have a macho or abrupt culture. Some of that may well be my own personal character deformities,” he said at the time.

O’Leary said on Monday that the airline had responded to the dip in forward fares and yields by lowering it full year traffic target to just under 81 million from over 81.5 million.

“We also released a range of lower fares and aggressive seat sales to stimulate traffic, load factors and bookings across all markets,” he added.

“Market pricing remains weak, so we will continue to promote low fare seat sales throughout the remainder of both Q3 and Q4.

“Forward bookings are running slightly ahead of last year, but the softness in fares and yields continues.”

Profit after tax rose 1% to €602m in the first six months of the year to 30 September, with passenger numbers up 2% at 49m.

Revenue increased 5% to €3.25m.

Ryanair completed €177m of share buy-backs in the first half, and said it would press ahead with its plan to return up to €600m to shareholders through buy-backs and special dividends before the end of the 2015 financial year.

Alitalia Bankruptcy Risk If No Capital Injection

Posted on by

Alitalia risks having to file for bankruptcy if no deal on a proposed capital increase is reached in a couple of weeks, a government source said on Tuesday.

Alitalia’s shareholders will vote on a capital increase of at least EUR€100 million (USD$136 million) on October 14 to help keep the company afloat.

“Alitalia risks filing for bankruptcy if no solution on the capital increase is found in a couple of weeks,” the government source told Reuters news agency.

Alitalia needs around EUR€500 million to keep going and to be able to invest in a new turnaround strategy, analysts have said, after accumulating losses of over EUR€1 billion since being privatized in 2009.

Air France-KLM owns a 25 percent stake in the carrier.

(Reuters)