ASA Adjudication on Travelodge Hotels Ltd

Ad

A national press ad and a radio ad for Travelodge. a. The press ad stated "Book now for rooms between December and February from £9 Guarantee against the winter blues." Smaller text stated "Book by 21st September. Terms apply." A footnote stated "£9 rates are only available at selected hotels on selected nights, must be booked at least 70 days before the date of arrival and are only available online at www.travelodge.co.uk. Book by Sunday 21 September 2008 for stays between 1 December 2008 and 22 February 2009. Subject to availability. This offer is non-commissionable and cannot be used in conjunction with any other discount scheme … Information correct at time of print. Travelodge reserves the right to constantly adjust its room prices. Once you have made a booking, the price you paid will not change." b. The radio ad stated " … and then Travelodge offer thousands of rooms from £9 a night. Tell you what love, we're going there. Hurry, book now for a room from £9 between the first of December and the 22nd of February. Before you go anywhere go to travelodge.co.uk. Offer ends 21st of September. Strictly limited availability, conditions apply."

Issue

Two readers and a listener challenged the availability of rooms at £9.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

BCAP Radio Code

Response

Travelodge said the promotion offered over 55,000 rooms at £9 each for stays between 1 December 2008 and 22 February 2009, which needed to be booked online at least 70 days in advance of the stay date.  They sent a list of all hotels and their £9 room allocations between the promotional dates, along with a summary of promotional activity and sales performance for the period 4-11 September 2008 (the period the promotion was advertised).  They confirmed that out of a total of 2,054,926 rooms available during the stay dates, 67,161 (3.3%) were available at £9, and that 350 hotels took part, with two hotels excluded due to an apparent oversight.  They said their franchise sites (the Irish sites plus Newport Magor, Glasgow Airport and Bolton West M61 Southbound) were, additionally, never included in such promotions and that that was stated on the website search page.  

Travelodge maintained they had acted in good faith and believed all their actions and advertising to be honest; they said the summary showed they had added a further 8,500 rooms to the offer on the second day of the sale to boost availability for customers searching for rooms over the weekend, and had stopped all marketing activity four days in, when they felt they could no longer meet the demands of the audience it would attract.  They believed they had taken all reasonable steps to ensure the accurate portrayal of the offer in their advertising and in terms of website support.  They added that the terms and conditions in the press ad emphasised that not every room at every available hotel during the sale period was available at the £9 rate.      

The Radio Advertising Clearance Centre (RACC) sent the substantiation Travelodge had provided before the radio ad was cleared.  It stated that there would be 50,000 rooms available at £9, on a mix of weekend and weekday nights, and confirmed that that rate would be available somewhere on every day of the promotional period.  The RACC therefore believed that the claim "thousands of rooms from £9 a night" was factually accurate, and they felt that, in the confines of a 30-second radio ad, the qualification "strictly limited availability" was sufficient for the purposes of not misleading listeners.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted 350 hotels participated in the offer and approximately 15 did not.  We also noted, barring the two hotels that appeared to have been left out in error, the exclusions were mentioned on the website search page.  We noted Travelodge had identified the percentage of rooms that were available at the £9 rate and that the figure varied widely from hotel to hotel, ranging from 0.7% to 28.6%.  We understood that Travelodge had experienced a higher level of demand than anticipated, which had led to website problems on the launch day, they had added extra rooms at the promotional price, and they had ended their press and radio campaigns earlier than planned.  We noted, furthermore, on the fifth day of the promotion just over 1,000 £9 rooms were still available, and the website was updated with a banner that stated "Last few rooms remaining", which was changed on the following day to "Sold Out".

We considered that the disclaimer text in the press ad "terms apply" and small print "£9 rates are only available at selected hotels on selected nights ... Subject to availability" would alert readers to the limited terms of the offer, and that the text "Information correct at time of print.  Travelodge reserves the right to constantly adjust its room prices" was sufficient to alert customers that the offer might be withdrawn earlier than the stated closing date.  We considered, nevertheless, that, although the vast majority of Travelodge hotels participated in the offer, many of them had only a very small percentage of their rooms available at £9, and we noted only two of the 350 hotels had percentages of available rooms that exceeded the 10% figure we typically regarded as the minimum in such circumstances.  We considered that, even if demand had not been higher than anticipated, customers would be likely to experience difficulty in finding a room at the offer price.  We considered, furthermore, that the disclaimer in the radio ad "Strictly limited availability, conditions apply" was insufficient to manage listeners' expectations.  We concluded that the ads were likely to mislead about the availability of the £9 offer.

The press ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness), 16.4 (Availability), 27.4 (Sales Promotion Rules), 30.1 and 30.2 (Sales Promotion Rules - Availability), and the radio ad breached CAP (Broadcast) Radio Advertising Standards Code Section 2 rule 3 (Misleadingness).

Action

We told Travelodge to ensure they had sufficient availability of rooms at "from" prices in future offers.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)