Ad description
A website for Secret Escapes, www.secretescapes.com, seen on 4 September 2024, featured a listing that stated, “Sublime seaside hotel in buzzy Bournemouth”, “Time-limited”, “up to -46% today”, and “From £135 £233 [crossed out] per room per night”. Two “i” symbols featured further text when hovered over that stated “On selected offers. The discount percentage is the maximum discount value we’ve found across a significant proportion of our dates in comparison to the hotel’s standard rate or the [competitor] rate for this offer. The strike through price is illustrative of that maximum discount. See Offer Details for full information”. Further text under “Offer Details” stated, “Our discount: The specified discount is calculated regularly and based on the hotel’s own prices or those on comparable booking portals”.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claim “up to -46% today” was misleading and could be substantiated.Response
Secret Escapes Ltd said that the “from” price and the “up to” discount percentage were available across a significant number of check-in dates within the offer period. They explained that dates with the cheapest “from” price would not necessarily also have the biggest percentage discount. Whilst they acknowledged the “from” and “up to” offers were positioned next to each other, they believed that the formatting and layout differences between the offers distinguished them from each other. They provided a spreadsheet which contained the price and percentage discount savings for all of the rooms and dates they had available during the offer period.
Secret Escapes explained that, when they calculated savings for offers, they accounted for additional benefits which were not available on other sites, such as late check-out and dining credits. They highlighted that the explanatory text referred to the discount “value” rather than the price, as they were comparing value where there was no direct comparison available. They also stated that the term “offer” referred to the additional benefits included in the comparison, rather than just the cost of the room. In relation to the offer featured in the ad, they checked availability and prices from 2 August 2024 to 31 December 2024 against a competitor and were compared in terms of room type and date. They stated that they advertised four different offers for the hotel, which all included 1pm late check-out, valued at £20. Since the competitor did not have the 1pm late check-out included in its offer, they manually added £20 to the price that the competitor offered before calculating the total discount.
Secret Escapes highlighted that the ad included two icons, located near the “from” price and percentage discount saving, which, when hovered over, displayed further information explaining how each was calculated. They stated the text directed customers to the “Offer Details” button which, when clicked on, included a list of the relevant included benefits.
Secret Escapes stated that they took transparent pricing practices seriously, and had reviewed their website following receipt of the complaint to ensure their promotions were clear to consumers. They explained that they had amended the explanatory wording next to the “up to” and “from” offers to make it clear that the value of additional benefits was included in the calculated discount. They stated that they had already planned a review of the presentation of their prices, and were happy to work with the ASA in the future to ensure consumers were not misled.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that consumers would understand the claim “Up to -46%” to mean that Secret Escapes offered hotel stays with a discount of up to 46% compared to the usual selling price of the same hotel stay on the hotel’s own website. Because the “from” price and “up to” percentage discount claim were displayed directly next to each other in the ad, we considered consumers would understand that the “up to” percentage discount directly related to the “from” price shown, and that the cost of £135 a night represented a 46% discount on the hotel stay. We considered that consumers would understand the comparison to be against the hotel’s standard rate, and that impression was likely to be reinforced by the explanatory text “discount percentage is the maximum discount value we’ve found… in comparison to the hotel’s standard rate or the [competitor] rate”.
We understood that the price £135 represented a 42% discount from the room rate of £233 rather than 46%, and that there was no correlation between the “from” price and the “up to” percentage discount seen in the ad. We acknowledged that there were two explanatory icons next to the “up to” percentage discount and “from” price. However, we considered that the text itself did not make clear that the two figures did not relate to each other. The differences in the font and layout of the “up to” and “from” claims were not significant enough to dispel the assumption that they related to each other. We therefore considered that the presentation of the claims was misleading.In addition, we understood that Secret Escapes added the value of additional benefits they offered to the usual selling price of the room on competitor sites and calculated the percentage discount from that higher figure. That meant the figure they had used as a reference for the discount was not the actual figure being charged to consumers as the standard rate for the room. We therefore considered that, due to the addition of the cost of extra benefits such as late check-out, the percentage discount figure did not reflect the true discount that customers would receive compared to the standard price of the room.
Because the percentage discount had not been calculated against the standard price of the hotel room, and the presentation of the “from” price and the percentage discount suggested they related to the same figure, we concluded that the savings claims were misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.22 (Prices) and 3.39 (Price comparisons).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Secret Escapes Ltd to ensure that price comparisons were not misleading, for example through the addition of the cost of extra benefits to a comparative price. We also told them to make the basis of price comparisons clear in their advertising.
