- Ryanair Transfers established
- available in 33 countries
- Powered by Dublin based Cartrawler
- Indicates expansion from multi branded car rental into traditional transfers
Ryanair’s Director of Ancillary Revenue Greg O’Gorman and CarTrawler’s Chief Commercial Officer Aileen McCormack
CarTrawler headquarters and customer centre are located in Dublin, with offices in Boston, London and Helsinki. Terenure brothers (first generation Offaly) Greg and Niall Turley co-founded CarTrawler in 2004 as a way for online travel agents, airlines and others to add car hire to their roster without having to source the inventory themselves. It also means they can access more of the market rather than through just using the biggest established brands.
Within a decade it grew to 1,000 partners, connecting end customers to 1,200 suppliers across 30,000 pickup locations, offering multi branded car rental options to partners in the travel industry, including airlines, OTAs and other online travel related operators. Having started out in cars, the company moved into offering all forms of ground transportation and last year signed a deal with bus aggregator Distribusion Technologies.
It operates online car rental sites under the Holiday Autos and Argus Car Hire brands. Notable recruits from the Irish travel trade have included Brian Ingarfield and, for a period, Yvonne Muldoon before she moved to Aer LIngus.
It is headed by Mike McGearty while Bobby Healy, CTO fronts many high profile confefrences in Dublin. Healy told a conferrence in Dublin last year that expansion outside of car hire was geared to increase relevance for its airline customers, especially on mobile. “Car hire is relevant to less than 5 percent of the audience but if you add the other forms of transportation like ways to get to and from the airport you quickly get to 60 percent when you support bus, coach, shared shuttle and other products.”
The Turleys sold most of their stake in 2011 and Catrtrawler was sold to European private equity firm BC Partners in 2014 for $500m.
Ryanair described the venture as a new transfers booking platform, powered by CarTrawler, allowing Ryanair customers to book the widest range of ground transport including taxis, chauffeur, bus, coach and rail services, and is the latest in a series of improvements under Ryanair’s “Always Getting Better” programme.
- See press release here.
