Background
This Ruling forms part of a wider piece of work on travel industry advertising and environmental claims. The ad was identified for investigation following intelligence gathered by our Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules.
Summary of Council decision:
Two Issues were investigated, both of which were Upheld.
Ad description
Two paid-for online display ads for eDreams, an online travel agency:
a. The first ad, seen on 3 June 2024, featured an aerial shot of a jungle and text that stated, “PUERTO RICO A sustainable destination”.
b. The second ad, seen on 15 July 2024, stated, “Discover our sustainable trips”.
Issue
The ASA challenged whether the following claims were misleading:
- “sustainable destination” in ad (a); and
- “sustainable trips” in ad (b).
Response
Vacaciones eDreams SL t/a eDreams confirmed the ads were no longer running.
They explained that they did not primarily sell package travel (flights and hotels together), and that their travel services were predominantly booked in isolation. For example, customers often booked accommodation through eDreams but booked their transport with another provider.
eDreams said they believed consumers would interpret the claim “sustainable destination” as taking into account its future economic, social and environmental impact. For example, a destination that promoted environmental conservation and biodiversity, or that implemented eco-friendly practices. Consumers would not understand the claim as including the environmental impact of reaching the destination. It was a claim about the destination itself. They provided examples which showed that a number of UK media outlets had used the phrase in that way.
eDreams said they assessed whether a destination was “sustainable” based on eight criteria, which were whether the destination: had certain official certifications, for example, under the Global Sustainable Tourist Council or UNESCO; informed its intended audience of its sustainability commitments through a dedicated web page; had a dedicated team ensuring it stayed up-to-date with European and international guidelines and regulations on sustainability; was taking steps to implement the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals; was aligned with the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism of the World Tourism Organization; offered accommodation in rural areas; offered social and environmental volunteer-based tourism experiences that promoted green initiatives or programmes that supported the local economy; and whether the destination’s sustainability initiates were audited by an external independent assessor.
eDreams said the list of destinations they had assessed as being sustainable was available on their website. Long haul travel was not necessarily required for all customers to reach the destinations – for example, Valencia and Portugal were shown as sustainable destinations for Spanish customers. The edreams.co.uk website was available to consumers globally, and it was therefore the case that UK consumers could, and often did, use the UK website to book while already abroad. They did not limit their sustainable destinations list to those that did not require air travel since doing so would have excluded all destinations and defeated their goal of encouraging consumers to consider the sustainability of their chosen destination.
Assessment
1. & 2. Upheld
The CAP Code required that the basis of environmental claims must be clear, that the meaning of all terms must be clear and that absolute environmental claims must be supported by a high level of substantiation.
Ad (a) stated, “PUERTO RICO A sustainable destination”, and ad (b) stated “sustainable trips”. Neither ad was qualified to explain the basis of the claim “sustainable”. The ASA considered that without this required qualification, the claims were ambiguous and unclear. Furthermore, the claims were absolute and a high level of substantiation in support needed to be produced. We acknowledged eDreams had a list of criteria that they used to assess whether or not a destination was “sustainable”. However, to support the absolute claims in the context in which they appeared, we needed to see evidence to demonstrate that Puerto Rico, as a destination (ad (a)), and the “trips” offered by eDreams (ad (b)) were not environmentally damaging.
Because the basis of the absolute “sustainable” claims had not been made clear, their meaning was unlikely to be understood and we had not seen sufficiently robust evidence to support them, we concluded that the ads were likely to mislead.
The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), 11.1, 11.2, and 11.3 (Environmental claims).
Action
The ads must not appear again in the form investigated. We told Vacaciones eDreams SL t/a eDreams to ensure that the basis of future environmental claims, and their meaning, was made clear. We reminded them that absolute environmental claims demanded a high level of substantiation.
