Ryanair to launch budget hotel booking site

Travellers will be able to select hotels, hostels, B&B’s, holiday villas and homestays through Ryanair Rooms when it launches on 1 October.

Booking.com has been the accommodation provider for the Ryanair website since 2009, but the airline will end its partnership with the travel agent in September to bring the service in-house.

The new site mounts a direct challenge to rivals such as Airbnb by allowing customers to choose their accommodation through Ryanair.com alongside flights.

The 'no frills' airline said it was aiming to offer rooms to its 116m annual customers at the ‘lowest possible prices’.

Kenny Jacobs of Ryanair said: “More and more customers are looking to Ryanair for products other than flights, and we see this as a natural progression towards Ryanair.com becoming the Amazon of air travel.”

The airline is inviting accommodation providers to list rooms on the site, but when contacted by BigHospitality it declined to reveal the commission rate it plans to charge hoteliers for bookings obtained through the platform.

Some online aggregators charge commissions of up to 20 per cent, which has led to accommodation firms such as Staycity launching marketing campaigns to encourage guests to book with them directly.​

A new eight per cent ‘low commission’ OTA Hotel Bonanza also launched this week in a bid to appeal to operators frustrated by the high rates.

Jacobs said: “We look forward to receiving proposals from interested partners who want to help us disrupt the travel industry once more.”