Airline company Ryanair (RYAAY) has reached a new agreement with travel services firm Booking Holdings (BKNG) that will allow Booking.com and KAYAK to legally sell Ryanair tickets again, which puts an end to their long-running legal fight. Indeed, for years, Ryanair took legal action against third-party platforms like Booking for reselling its tickets without permission. This was because the airline accused them of adding extra fees and making it harder to contact passengers directly. However, since early last year, Ryanair started changing its approach.
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In a joint statement, both companies said that the new partnership will bring “full price transparency” and allow customers to get important flight updates directly from Ryanair. The deal also includes Booking’s other travel websites, such as Priceline and Agoda. At the same time, Ryanair confirmed that all open legal disputes are now settled. Interestingly, it’s worth noting that one of the biggest cases between the two had been moving through U.S. courts since 2020, with Ryanair accusing Booking’s websites of scraping its site for flight data without permission. That case had faced multiple appeals over the years.
The legal battle also had financial consequences. In fact, after the legal pressure increased, several online travel agencies stopped offering Ryanair flights in December 2023. As a result, this cut Ryanair off from a major sales channel and led to a drop in average ticket prices of about 10% during last year’s two busy summer quarters. However, Ryanair later said the situation had mostly improved, and with this new agreement, the airline appears to be cooperating more with booking platforms instead of fighting them in court.
Is BKNG Stock a Good Buy?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on BKNG stock based on 17 Buys, nine Holds, and zero Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average BKNG price target of $6,109.65 per share implies 7.6% upside potential.
