The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has published a series of rulings about misleading hotel room pricing in the UK. Significantly, the rulings didn’t come about as a response to consumer complaints.
Legal firm Lewis Silkin notes that the various ads were identified for investigation following intelligence gathered by the ASA’s Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules in the CAP Code (the UK’s adertisig code).
The ASA challenged whether price claims in the ads concerned were misleading and could be substantiated. The challenges were upheld. The key message was that when using “from” price claims, advertisers need to make sure that a significant proportion of rooms are available at the advertised price, and across a range of dates if the ad is not for a specific date.
A couple of the advertisers concerned said that they provide accurate prices to online search providers, but the ASA made clear that this does not mean that the advertisers don’t need to worry about complying with the CAP Code.
Limited-time sales
As well as the pricing issues, the ASA also investigated a claim in a fifth ad that a sale was ending in four days.
The closing date for the offer was extended by two weeks, so the ASA challenged whether the promotion breached the CAP Code.
Closing dates for promotions must not be changed unless unavoidable circumstances outside the promoter’s control make it necessary, and not to change the date would be unfair to those who sought to participate within the original terms, or those who sought to participate within the original terms would not be disadvantaged by the change.
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