Ryanair To Challenge Airbnb With New Private Room Rentals

Everything Ryanair touches seems to turn to gold these days – and their latest move is to take on Airbnb as a global portal for private room hire.

Starting this October they'll be adding everything from five-star hotel rooms through to a marketplace to rent private rooms, much like Airbnb operates at the moment.

"We see this as a natural progression towards Ryanair.com becoming the Amazon of air travel," chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said.

With more than 100 million passengers set to be carried in 2016, this is a huge move from an operator that has serious clout in the travel space. 

Always great to see an Irish company thinking this big and punching way above their weight – it's currently the biggest airline in the world by passenger numbers, and if this works it could become something even bigger.