Ad description

Claims on www.eurodisneydirect.com promoted hotel accommodation. The booking page allowed consumers to select the hotel, the arrival date, the number of nights to stay and the number of rooms required and adults and children staying. A search for Hotel Cheyenne for four nights from 19 March 2014 for two adults and two children stated "Available Hotel accommodation details. Our booking system has found the best Hotel Cheyenne price(s) and Disney offer(s) available for your selected arrival date below". The details stated "Standard room FREE HALF BOARD" and the price, with a further link to "select room", which took the consumer to the next stage of the booking process.

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading because after placing a booking, which they understood included free half board, they were contacted by the advertisers and informed that the free half board offer was not available.

Response

Clippers Quay Travel t/a Euro Disney Direct stated the December offer in question was up to 20% off a hotel with free half board. They stated that the terms and conditions for each offer were displayed on the website and there was at least one hotel available for every date of the offer, but in the complainant's case the the selected hotel was not available with the free meals.

They stated that at the final booking form stage, and before submitting the order, the customer had to confirm that they had read the sales conditions. They stated that, within those sales conditions, it was made clear that there might be errors on the website.

They added that the offers were linked to live availability which were ever changing and considered that the website clearly conveyed that to customers in the terms and conditions.

They stated that the provisional online order was received by their reservation staff following the complainant's booking and they immediately contacted the complainant to explain they could not fulfil the provisional order. They offered alternatives, such as adding on the half board meal plan, accepting an alternative hotel where the free half board offer was available or cancelling the online booking order.

They provided an example of a provisional order which showed how they communicated that there might be information on the website that could be inaccurate and that the booking would be processed by their sales team before confirmation of the final order.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered that consumers would understand from the claim "FREE HALF BOARD", which appeared in the first stage of the booking process, that the available hotel room for the selected dates included free half board. We understood, however, that the booking process was linked to a live system and availability was provisional only. We noted there was therefore no guarantee that the selected offer displayed at this stage of the process would be available in the final instance.

We noted that, during a later stage of the booking process, several web pages later, text below the link "confirm booking" stated "* Availability cannot be guaranteed until the reservation process has been fully completed. To avoid disappointment complete your hotel reservation online TODAY!".

We considered most consumers would be likely to understand from that text that once they had clicked to finalise the order on the website, they had completed the offer and the availability of the hotel and offer was therefore secured. We understood, however, that the availability was not confirmed at the end of the online booking process on the website, but that the consumer had to wait for a follow-up e-mail confirmation from the advertisers.

We considered that the provisional nature of the booking and availability was significant information which should be made clear from the outset of the booking process. We did not consider it was sufficient to set out that information in a separate link or in the terms and conditions.

Because we considered that the ad did not make sufficiently clear that availability of the advertised offer was limited or that bookings were provisional until consumers had received a follow-up confirmation e-mail, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.    3.3 3.3 Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
 (Misleading advertising),  3.7 3.7 Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.  (Substantiation),  3.9 3.9 Marketing communications must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.  (Qualification) and  3.30 3.30 Marketers must not use the technique of switch selling, in which their sales staff decline to show the advertised product, refuse to take orders for it or to deliver it within a reasonable time or demonstrate a defective sample of it to promote a different product.  (Availability).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told the advertisers to ensure that it was clear throughout the booking process that offers were subject to limited availability and were provisional only.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.3     3.30     3.7     3.9    


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