INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM, TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY LAW with OTB’s concerted attempts to agree a more collaborative arrangement. Ryanair has sought to justify such practices by claiming that they are necessary to protect consumers, because online travel agents do not promptly pass on refunds from Ryanair to their customers. This, according to OTB, is untrue, at least as far as it is concerned. Ryanair’s true motive for this practice, so it is said, is to weaken OTB including through financial pressure and negative publicity, and – by requiring OTB customers to apply directly to Ryanair for refunds – to gather data by which it can improve its ability to prevent OTB from making bookings for OTB customers, and/or degrade those customers’ experiences after such bookings are successfully made. In short, OTB’s case is that Ryanair has used the circumstances of the Covid- -19 pandemic to fuel its smear campaign against OTB, and to exacerbate that smear campaign by seeking to prevent OTB from booking Ryanair flights for OTB customers, and/or degrading the customer experience where OTB succeeds in doing so. In acting in this way, OTB believes that Ryanair has been seeking to damage it in the eyes of consumers and starve it of cash at a time when, as Ryanair is well aware, OTB’s operations have been substantially reduced by the Covid-19 pandemic. 6. THE DEFENCE Ryanair defends the claim. Due to the jurisdictional challenge referred to above, it has not yet filed a Defence in the English proceedings. However, it is anticipated that it will do so on the basis that its actions are justified and are not in fact intended to be anti-competitive. Further, it is said, the actions of OTB in booking flights on behalf of its customers are a breach of Ryanair’s standard terms and conditions, which explicitly forbid agents from doing so. This is part of a concerted effort by Ryanair to market flights to potential passengers directly rather than via agents, partly in order to render the customer experience a more straightforward one, and also so that the airline rather than an agent has the opportunity to market additional holiday components and add ons. Ryanair contends that this is a legitimate business concern and that its actions are a proportionate means of achieving it.
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