Ryanair has opted for Madrid as the location for its third Travel Lab, and is planning to employ 250 developers.
The first Ryanair Travel Lab opened in Dublin in July 2014, followed by a site in Wroclaw, Poland, at the start of 2016.
Its Travel Lab initiative was part of its "Always Getting Better" campaign, now in its fourth year, and has developed and delivered many of the tech advances the airline has introduced during this time.
Ryanair.com is the world's largest airline website while the Ryanair app has 19 million users. The airline believes that the inhouse tech expertise coming from its Labs will help it exploit the scale of its digital presence to become a travel marketplace, or as execs like to call it, "the Amazon of travel."
John Hurley, Ryanair's chief technology officer, said that Madrid has been chosen because "it is a major tech city, with a highly educated workforce and the home of some of Europe’s biggest tech innovators."
Madrid Airport will handle 6.8 million Ryanair passengers this year, with the airline claiming to be the biggest in Spain.