When Scrapers Get Scraped: eDreams Moves Against Tryp.com in Prime Fare Dispute

For online travel agencies large and small, getting access to the cheapest flights is the holy grail.

Denmark-based Tryp.com, which bundles flights and hotels into packaged holidays, knew major airlines and online travel agencies wouldn’t offer it special deals because of its small size — so it had to get creative.

In November, Spain-based eDreams Odigeo, which has been engaged in its own pitched battle with Ryanair for years over the unauthorized scraping of the airline’s website, demanded that Tryp.com pay it a 95,000 euro ($110,000) penalty for booking flights on eDreams’ websites that it claimed violated its terms and conditions.

The basic facts are not in dispute.

eDreams offers a subscription service called Prime, which offers customers discounts on flights and hotels in exchange for paying an annual fee of approximately 96 euro