Ryanair, Netflix, hotel toiletries, British Airways: your commercial news round-up

Why are British Airways pilots striking? What is Netflix doing to counteract the fall in subscribers? How much money has the government put aside for a no-deal Brexit scenario? Find out in our weekly summary of the most interesting and relevant commercial news stories of the week:

• Ryanair employees are braced for up to 900 redundancies as Chief Executive Michael O’Leary this week announced that the budget airline has more pilots and cabin crew than it requires. The job losses will be confirmed at the end of August as O’Leary blamed higher fuel costs, a fare war and the grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max planes for the company’s 21% drop in quarterly earnings.
• In other airline news, pilots from British Airways are set to strike next month after an injunction to prevent the strike was overturned by the High Court. The pilots are arguing over their pay which they say is not representative of BA’s healthy profits. Last year the airline’s owner IAG reported a pre-tax profit of £2.8 billion – 9.8% up on the previous year.
• After Netflix revealed that it lost US subscribers for the first time in nearly a decade, the online streaming service has reportedly invested over $520 million in three big-budget Hollywood films. Hoping to pull back viewers is Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Michael Bay’s 6 Underground and the Dwayne Johnson action film Red Notice.
• It’s bad news for stingy hotel-stayers but good news for the environment as the owners of the Holiday Inn hotel chain have become the first brand to ban mini toiletries in their hotels. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) promised to remove toiletries from its 843,000 rooms by 2021 and will replace them with bulk shampoo and conditioner. IGH has committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 6% per occupied room by next year. with plans in place to remove plastic straws, plates and cutlery, and to cut down on waste across breakfast buffets.
• The government announced today that it has set aside an extra £2.1 billion of funding to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, more than double the budget for this year. The money will be used to employ more border force officers, upgrade transport infrastructure at ports and ease traffic queues in Kent and at the border. Chancellor Sajid Javid said that the additional money “will ensure we are ready to leave on 31 October – deal or no-deal”.

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