Ryanair and Isango best buddies again, create tour and activity selling service

April 10, 2012 By 2 Comments

Ryanair is giving the tour and activity end of its drive to increase ancillary revenues another try – once again through online retailer Isango.

Isango is providing tours and activities for sale on a Ryanair-branded microsite, similar to services it operates for car hire and airport transfers.

The move comes a week after Ryanair’s involvement with Booking.com ended and a new provider of accommodation was found in the shape of metasearch service HotelsCombined.

The HotelsCombined agreement has yet to be announced, but is now live on the site under a RyanairHotels white label.

The new tour and activity section on the Ryanair website will feature approximately 2,000 products for destinations on the airline’s network of destinations, covering products such as city tours, discounted entrance fees to attractions and theatre tickets.

Those with reasonably long memories, however, will recall that Isango has been in a similar position once before, unveiled as the carrier’s partner for selling tours and activities in May 2008 (although it actually started quite a while before in 2007).

The deal ended abruptly in first quarter of 2009, with an Isango official quoted as saying the commercial terms “did not stack up for us”.

A few years is a long time in the world of airline ancillaries, clearly, with Isango back on-board and claiming it has “learned a great deal” about how to sell products through partners.

The backbone of the new deal, CEO Ranjan Singh says, will be a process of capturing passengers with relevant offers for products to the destination they are flying to both during the booking process and in the follow-up correspondence the airline uses in the lead up to departure day.

“Simply slapping products on a homepage does not work,” Singh says. “We will be using the confirmation process and email CRM in a much better way, highly-targeted to the passenger.”

It is hoped the new deal will push Isango into a comfortable position, with Singh claiming the company will have more turnover in 2012 than the previous three years combined.

The white label will be in the top five the company currently has alongside such partnerships with Qantas and Travel Counsellors.

Ryanair’s arch rival EasyJet appears to be in a similar position, after its deal with Viator finished in late-2011 at the end of its five-year term.

The carrier is currently without a tour and activity partner on the site.

Related posts:

  1. Isango and Easytobook unite with tours and activities deal
  2. Pocketvillage relaunches, creates tour and activity search API for third parties
  3. Expedia to grow tour and activity channel, no more palm trees and price points
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Kevin May About Kevin May

Kevin May is editor of Tnooz. He joined as a co-founder in August 2009 after spending nearly four years as editor of UK-based business publication Travolution.

Passionate about the business of travel and the internet, Kevin played a major role in establishing Travolution in print, online, events and with an annual awards programme, as well as becoming a regular speaker and moderator at industry events.

Prior to Travolution, Kevin was web editor at Media Week (UK) and also worked in regional newspapers for two years at the Essex Enquirer. He started his career in journalism at the Police Gazette at New Scotland Yard in London.

Comments

  1. Ken Frohling says:
    April 10, 2012 at 11:17 am

    HI Kevin

    Just to clarify – Viator and easyJet did complete the full term of our 5- year agreement. We jointly decided to not renew the agreement for another term as “the commercial terms “did not stack up for us”. – to quote others!

    Ken

    Reply

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