Yesterday, Ryanair backed down from its insistence that it would defy EU regulations by refusing to reimburse food and accommodation beyond the price of the ticket purchased. CEO Michael O’Leary, who only days earlier had insisted that his company would pay nothing more than the cost of passengers’ original tickets, said that ‘If a claim is reasonable, it will be reimbursed’, leaving some to ponder whether this is just the latest story in the steady stream of headline-grabbing issues that were never proposed seriously by the fiery Ryanair frontman.
If so, the public are not impressed. While Ryanair’s TellYouGov score of -68 (and volume of 78) on the day of O’Leary’s backtrack seemed average at worst, especially when compared to scores as low as -134 (Katie Price) and -300 (Gordon Brown), this belies a sorry state of public relations, as only 61 out of 513 comments, or ‘tygs’, on Ryanair over the day were positive. And O’Leary’s retreat hasn’t improved the public’s opinion – if anything, things have got worse. In the past 24 hours, the airline’s score has dropped to -131, down 63 points in the past 24 hours, and its volume score has climbed 85 points to 163, enough to rival leaderboard staples Katie Price and Lady Gaga – indicative of the extent of the public’s vitriol. The overwhelming majority of comments are scathing.
For most tyggers, their issue is the sheer lack of respect that O’Leary is prepared to show Ryanair’s customers. One referred to Ryanair’s ‘terrible treatment of customers regarding the travel problems’, and another that they ‘never cared about their customers’ and showed a ‘lack of compassion’. However, Ryanair has been the target of similar fury before, and profits remained unaffected.
However, the dire state of Ryanair’s public relations is corroborated by its BrandIndex scores, in particular their Index score, which is an aggregate of all BrandIndex measures. The score fell to a low of over a month at -32.0 on April 21st, before making a very slight increase to the still-negative -31.8 on April 22nd as O’Leary made his concession to customers.
But it seems that if O’Leary wishes to establish how the scandal might affect his company, he need look no further than TellYouGov – one tygger proposed ‘how about suspending his operating license until a date can be scheduled, sometime around 2015?’ The tygger ended his comment with a decisive ‘[it’s] time to boycott this shabby outfit’. Another lamented: ‘Ryanair: terrible everything!’
