Tue 23 Dec 2025 03.02 EST First published on Tue 23 Dec 2025 02.20 EST Share Italy antitrust regulator fines Ryanair €235m over dealings with travel agencies From cars to planes! Ryanair has been fined €235m (£205m) by Italy’s competition authority for abusing its dominant position in its dealings with travel agents. The Italian Competition Authority imposed the penalty after concluding that Ryanair had executed an “elaborate strategy” to block online and traditional travel agencies from purchasing Ryanair flights on ryanair.com, or to make it harder. This, it says, weakened competition from agencies and reduced the quality and range of tourism services available to consumers. The ICA says: The investigation revealed that, at the end of 2022, Ryanair began to explore ways to hinder travel agencies. From mid-April 2023, these plans were implemented through measures that intensified over time. At first, Ryanair rolled out facial recognition procedures on its website aimed at users who purchased their ticket through a travel agency. Then, at the end of 2023, when the Authority’s investigation was underway, Ryanair totally or intermittently blocked booking attempts by travel agencies on its website (for example, by blocking payment methods and mass-deleting accounts linked to OTA bookings). In a third phase of its strategy, in early 2024, Ryanair imposed partnership agreements on OTAs and, subsequently, Travel Agent Direct accounts on traditional agencies, containing terms that restricted agencies from offering Ryanair flights in combination with other services. To “persuade” agencies to partner up, Ryanair periodically blocked bookings and launched an aggressive communication campaign against non-signatory OTAs, labelling them “pirate OTAs”. In April 2025, Ryanair made its full white-label iFrame solution available to OTAs. This enabled the integration of IT applications (so-called APIs) which, if properly implemented, make it possible to restore effective competition in the downstream market for tourism services. Share