Ad description
An online display ad for parking at Edinburgh Airport. Text stated: "Edinburgh Airport ... Official Edinburgh Airport Parking. You won't find our parking for less pre-book from only £3.19 per day Book now".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claim "pre-book from only £3.19 per day" was misleading and could be substantiated, because the lowest price that they were quoted on the Edinburgh Airport parking website was significantly higher than that stated in the ad.
Response
Edinburgh Airport said that they checked their prices on a monthly basis to ensure that a reasonable proportion of the bookings were available at the "from" price by looking at actual sales data to ensure that over 10% of bookings achieved the average daily rate (ADR) of £3.19, as advertised. They stated that they also looked at future inventory to ensure that more than 10% of bookings were available at prices lower than the ADR of £3.19.
They said that whether a customer was able to achieve the advertised ADR depended on the car park selected, the product type, lead time and whether the arrival dates were during the peak or off peak period. As such, future availability of bookings that could achieve the advertised ADR price for a given period would be determined by the number of possible booking combinations of the factors that could achieve the advertised ADR out of the total number of possible booking combinations.
Edinburgh Airport stated that they did not limit allocation in each price band, but they ensured that bookings in each category of car park were limited to a set number so that there would be sufficient space remaining for customers who had not made any bookings.
They provided data for bookings made during February and March 2014 that showed that more than 15% of bookings in each month achieved the ADR of £3.19 or below. They also provided 'forward price snapshots' up to October 2014 that showed in excess of 10% of possible bookings that would able to achieve the ADR of £3.19 or lower for this period.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA noted that the ad promoted parking at Edinburgh Airport in general and did not specify a particular booking or stay period. We understood that the complainant saw the ad in February 2014 and sought the lowest prices for a mid-week two-day stay at the Long Stay car park in September 2014. Although we acknowledged that the complainant had made many attempts to achieve the ADR of the advertised ”from” rate, we noted from the evidence provided by Edinburgh Airport that more than 35% of the total of possible bookings for the period from when the complainant saw the ad to October 2014 would have been able to achieve the advertised “from" rate or below.
We noted that the data provided by Edinburgh Airport was further broken down into different car park categories: Long Stay, Short Stay, Fast Track and Valet Parking. We noted that for the period from 25 February 2014 to October 2014, the percentage of bookings for Long Stay car park that could achieve the ADR of £3.19 or below was 60.88%, 35.54% for Short Stay car park, 36.01% for Valet Parking and 2.99% for Fast Track parking.
Although we noted that only 2.99% of bookings for Fast Track parking in the period would achieve the ADR of the advertised ”from” rate or below, we considered that consumers would not reasonably expect every car park type that Edinburgh Airport offered would include the advertised ”from”, particularly Fast Track parking which was the most expensive parking category that they offered and represented less than 2% of the available spaces.
We noted that the number of bookings that could achieve the advertised ”from” rate for each month during the period between 25 February 2014 and October 2014 did not significantly differ from one month to another. We also noted that this number gradually decreased in September and October 2014 for Long Stay, Short Stay and Valet Parking and that there were no bookings available that could achieve the advertised ”from” rate for Fast Track parking for these two months.
On the basis that the number of bookings that could be made for the advertised ”from” rate for parking in general was reasonably consistently maintained, we considered that the availability of bookings at the advertised ”from” rate was reasonably evenly spread across the period.
As the data provided by Edinburgh Airport demonstrated that a reasonable proportion of the total booking combinations that could be made over a period, that those seeing the ad might reasonably expect the claim to cover could be made for the advertised rate of £3.19 or below, and that the availability of the advertised ”from”' rate was reasonably evenly spread across the period, we concluded that Edinburgh Airport had demonstrated sufficient availability at the advertised ”from” rate. We concluded that the ad was not misleading.
The ad was investigated under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules
3.1
3.1
Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
3.3
3.3
Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
(Misleading Advertising),
3.7
3.7
Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.
(Substantiation),
3.17
3.17
Price statements must not mislead by omission, undue emphasis or distortion. They must relate to the product featured in the marketing communication.
and
3.22
3.22
Price claims such as "up to" and "from" must not exaggerate the availability or amount of benefits likely to be obtained by the consumer.
(Prices), but was not found to be in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
