Ryanair praises its Labs for driving growth seen in annual results

Boss Michael O’Leary expects use of MyRyanair app to rise by 50% in the next year.

Ryanair praised its use of technology in driving its growing load factor and record traffic as the budget airline released its annual results.

The company posted profits of €1.3 billion, a 6% rise on the previous year.

Its results also showed a load factor of 94%, which the airline claims is “industry leading”, and a 13% rise in traffic to 120 million customers.

Ryanair recently doubled the size of its Labs team in Wroclaw, Poland and opened its third Labs facility in Madrid, Spain.

Chief executive Michael O’Leary also said he expects membership of the MyRyanair app, which has 20.5 million downloads, will rise to 30 million in the next financial year.

O’Leary said: “The success of Ryanair Labs is reflected in our growing load factor and record traffic. Ryanair.com is now the world’s most visited airline website and our mobile app has over 20.5m downloads. Membership of “MyRyanair” grew to 20m members by year end and we expect this to rise to 30m members in FY18.

“While many competitors subcontract their IT development to high cost third parties, in Ryanair we believe the success of Labs has vindicated our decision to manage and control this development internally, while rolling out high quality, proprietary, mobile and web platforms.

“Continuing improvements in our website and mobile technology has boosted ancillary revenue, by making it easier for customers to choose travel-related services including our Plus products, reserved seating, priority boarding, security fast track, etc. Our car hire conversion rates are rising, and we are working hard to boost the sale of Rooms and Holidays where we are delivering low-cost travel solutions for our customers.”

In the year up to March 31, Ryanair’s ancillary revenue grew by 13% to €1.8bn, and now accounts for 27% of total revenues.