Ad description
A national press ad for Mercury Holidays, seen in the Daily Mail on 11 May 2024, featured various offers for a package holiday to Madeira. Text at the top of the ad stated, “Experience 5 [star symbol] in Madeira […] A week ‘Ultra’ All-Inclusive from £689 [asterisk symbol]”. A box near the bottom of the ad, labelled “Winter Warmers 2024/25”, included a table of prices for holidays available from November 2024 to February 2025. Each month included three columns showing the price for one week, three weeks, and a fourth week. Each third column for November, January and February all listed the fourth week as “FREE”. Small print at the bottom of the ad stated, “4th week free applies to stays 01/11-15/12 and 03/01-28/02”.
Issue
The complainant, who was unable to book a holiday with a fourth week included as free within the dates seen in the ad, challenged whether the price claims were misleading.
Response
Sunspot Tours t/a Mercury Holidays said that consumers had been able to book a four-week (28 night) holiday via their website with the fourth week included for free. They provided two examples of eligible holidays for dates between November to December 2024 and January to February 2025, which they believed demonstrated that the fourth week was free for consumers as advertised.
Assessment
Upheld
The CAP Code stated that products must not be described as “free” if the cost of response, including the price of a product that the consumer must buy to take advantage of the offer, had been increased, except where the increase resulted from factors that were unrelated to the cost of the promotion.
The ad included several package holiday deals, and a table which included “Winter Warmers” deals for 2024-25. The table listed one, three and four week stays from November 2024 to February 2025. In all except the December row, the fourth week was shown as being “FREE”. The ASA considered that consumers would therefore understand that in the months of November 2024, and January and February 2025, when a three-week holiday was purchased, an additional week would be included for no extra cost as part of the promotional “Winter Warmers” offer. In particular, we considered that consumers would expect that because the fourth week was listed as being “free”, they would pay the same price for a four-week holiday as they would for a three-week holiday in that timeframe.
We noted that when the complainant had tried to redeem the “free” offer and book a four-week holiday, they were quoted a cost greater than the advertised price of a three-week holiday to the same destination within the same timeframe. For November 2024 and January 2025, a one-week stay was shown as costing £709 and a three-week stay as £2,129. For January 2025, one week was listed as costing £689 and three weeks was £2,119. However, when the complainant had attempted to book a four-week holiday, they found they were quoted over £500 more than the advertised price of a three-week stay for the same period. We understood that the three-week holidays listed in the ad were subject to a separate 15% “early bird” discount. However, because that discount did not apply to the cost of a four-week holiday, it meant that the overall price of a four-week stay was more than that of a three-week stay and accounted for the higher price quoted to the complainant.
Because we considered that consumers would expect the cost of a four-week holiday to be the same as that for a three-week holiday, if the fourth week was advertised as “free”, and as that was not the case, we concluded therefore that the ad was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.17, 3.24, and 3.24.2 (Misleading advertising).
Action
The ads must not appear again in the form complained about. We told Sunspot Tours Ltd t/a Mercury Holidays that they should not describe a holiday as including a “free” period of time, if the overall cost increased when adding the extra time period.
