Ryanair GBP vs. euro fares savings

vkharch

Hi,

If you can & do not mind to pay for your Ryanair flight in euro, you might be able to save up about 16% of your fare .

I've been booking flight to/from Tenerife and noticed that the cost of flight, luggage fee from Tenerife is exactly same in pounds and euro, when buying separately as one way tickets.

So when booking return flight (STN-TFS) from UK the cost from Tenerife to London is let say £100 + £20 for the bag. When buying separately as one way the cost would be €100 = €20 for the bag. That is about 16% saving based on the current exchange rate. Though be aware of the currency exchange fee.

benjus

How much do you actually end up paying when using a card in GBP? Ryanair tends to do dynamic currency conversion, doesn't it (i.e. charge the card in the card's own currency, converting at an exchange rate set by Ryanair)?

vkharch

benjus wrote: »

How much do you actually end up paying when using a card in GBP? Ryanair tends to do dynamic currency conversion, doesn't it (i.e. charge the card in the card's own currency, converting at an exchange rate set by Ryanair)?

Unfortunately, I can not answer that as I bought the flight back from Monarch as they had more suitable hours. Though, you might have a valid point and Ryanair rate might wipe out large part of the saving. Perhaps prepaid Euro mastercard might be an answer...

On the other hand Monarch had the option where one can select to buy the ticket in GBP or Euro. I paid in Euro and that saved me about £10 on exchange rate for €311, 2 one way tickets.

The_Groat_Counter

Ryanair's sneaky attempt to foist dynamic currency conversion on punters can be avoided, but you do need to carefully follow all the necessary steps in order to opt out of it.

It should be noted that there are some advantages to buying out and back flights together in the same transaction - whilst Ryanair (and other budget airlines like easyJet) sell flights as single journeys, when out and back flights are purchased together they do sort of constitute a return ticket - e.g. if the outbound flight is cancelled, then you can get a refund on both the out and back flights (if they were purchaed together), plus I think it might possibly be helpful if your flight back was cancelled if said flight was purchased as the 'return' flight (i.e. maybe you'd get more help in 'getting back' in such a scenario, compared to if you were 'going out').

NFH

benjus wrote: »

Ryanair tends to do dynamic currency conversion, doesn't it (i.e. charge the card in the card's own currency, converting at an exchange rate set by Ryanair)?

No, they don't charge necessarily in the card's own currency. They in fact attempt to charge in the local currency of the card's country of issue. This is particularly apparent if you use a UK-issued EUR-denominated card, as they will attempt to convert a EUR fare to GBP and charge the card in GBP. No merchant can detect a card's billing currency, only the country of issue.

cactusdust

In smaller purchases I don't have any issue with the Ryanair currency exchange rate. For example, I booked a few flights from Dublin back the UK as singles and they cost €6.00. The automated currency converter charged me £5.40 something.

It's so cheap it doesn't matter anyway..