Kiwi.com wins constitutional court ruling in Ryanair dispute
Kiwi.com will continue to fight for fair competition and consumer choice
Brno, 27 August 2021 – Whenever there is a disruptive force in a market there will be fights as legacy businesses resist change. Ryanair have not truly been challenged since they were founded, not until Kiwi.com’s technology brought a new way to buy travel and create unique itineraries. Using their dominant position in the market, Ryanair’s first form of defense against change has been to attack the challenger (in this case Kiwi.com), through both the media and the courts even if there is little substance to claims being made.
At Kiwi.com we create unique virtual contact information and payment details for customer reservations – we do that to provide the full end to end management of a customers booking (in a secure and safe environment) and this often includes adding other airlines/carriers into customers itineraries, which is something that Ryanair isn’t able to do. It’s innovation.
Ryanair don’t like that, Ryanair went to court in an effort to immediately stop this. We went back to the courts – we said this breached our constitutional rights to do business. This, after all, is ultimately a commercial disagreement between two companies and Ryanair should compete with us at a business level and not by taking customers hostage to try and enforce what they can or can’t voluntarily buy.
It has come as a surprise to some big airlines that, what they thought of as a small Czech business, can have such an impact on changing the industry.
This constitutional court ruling today, in our favour, is just part of a long journey in protecting customer choice and allows us to continue the fight for fair competition in the market that Kiwi.com’s technology and innovation has enabled. The court stated that Kiwi.com’s right to free expression in commercial communication and right to free entrepreneurship were breached.
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About Kiwi.com
Kiwi.com is a leading travel tech company founded in 2012. Its proprietary algorithm – Virtual Interlining – allows users to build unique itineraries to combine flights and ground transportation from more than 800 carriers. Kiwi.com powers more than 100 million searches every day.
Media Contacts
Kiwi.com
Carol Barnes, Head of Global Communications, Kiwi.com
[email protected]