Background
Update to Advertising Codes (7 April 2025):
On 7 April 2025, the Advertising Codes were updated to reflect the revocation and restatement of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (“CPRs” – the legislation from which the majority of the CAP and BCAP rules on misleading advertising derived) by the Unfair Commercial Practices provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (“DMCCA”). On that date, the wording of a number of the rules in the Advertising Codes was changed to reflect relevant changes introduced by the DMCCA on 6 April 2025.
Given that the complaint that formed the subject of this ruling were received before 7 April 2025, the ASA considered the ad and complaint under the wording of the rules that existed prior to 7 April 2025, and the Ruling (and references to rules within it) should therefore be read in line with this wording, available here – CAP Code and BCAP Code.
Ad description
A booking webpage for Holiday Gems, www.holidaygems.co.uk, seen in December 2024, featured confirmation details for a hotel and flights to Gran Canaria. Text stated, “Your Holiday Summary. Total Cost: £1740.73”.
Issue
The complainant, who had booked the holiday, but had subsequently been told the price stated in the ad was no longer available and that they would have to pay an additional £34, challenged whether the price claim was misleading.
Response
Holiday Gems Ltd said that the ad should have included a qualification that it was a “from” price. They said that due to a technical error, the “from” price qualification had inadvertently been omitted from holiday listings when consumers accessed them via their internal website search tool. They said they would fix that error, which had occurred because their website had been redeveloped.
Although Holiday Gems acknowledged that technical error, they believed their processes had provisions in place which made it explicitly clear that the advertised price was a quote that was subject to change. They said the ad was described as a “holiday summary” and not a “booking” and that customers had to accept their terms and conditions before proceeding on the website. They said the fact it was a summary and not a finalised booking was then communicated again to consumers via an email. Holiday Gems provided a copy of their terms and conditions for online bookings. The terms and conditions described how the booking process worked and stated that the claim on the website was a quoted price and not a confirmed booking. They said that consumers had the option to cancel if there was a change in price because no booking would have been completed before the finalised price was confirmed.
Assessment
Upheld
The ad was a booking page for a selected holiday and featured details such as the hotel, flights and dates. The ASA considered consumers would understand the price claim “Total Cost: £1740.73” to mean that amount was the total price that they would pay for that holiday, notwithstanding the cost of any optional extras. That particular price claim was repeated throughout the online booking process and when the complainant had their payment authorised. We did not consider that consumers were likely to interpret the claim as a quote that was subject to change.
We understood the complainant was subsequently informed that the price had increased and that they were required to pay an additional £34 as well as an additional £4.95 transaction fee to complete the booking.
We acknowledged that the claim in the ad was a quoted price for a particular holiday and not a confirmed booking. However, the fact that it was not a confirmed booking was not sufficient to avoid the price claim misleading consumers in the event that it was not available. We considered that contacting a consumer to request further payment once an online booking process had been completed would have rendered that quoted price claim misleading. Additionally, amending the price once a payment had been authorised, as we understood the complainant had done, would again have rendered the quoted price misleading.
While we acknowledged that holiday prices available through third parties were liable to change, consumers should nevertheless have been able to rely on prices quoted to them when booking, and advertisers were responsible for ensuring that stated prices were genuine and did not mislead.
Because the holiday was not available for the stated “Total Cost” in the ad, we concluded that the price claim was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 (Prices).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Holiday Gems Ltd to ensure that their price claims were based on genuine prices available to consumers and to ensure they clearly stated that their prices were quotes that were subject to change.
