Background
This ruling forms part of a wider piece of work on the availability of advertised hotel prices. 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. See also related rulings published on 19 November.
Ad description
A paid-for search ad for Booking.com, seen on 6 May 2025, stated “Places to stay in Sheffield – Best Price Guarantee”. Further text stated, “easyHotel Sheffield City Centre From £28”.
Issue
The ASA challenged whether the claim “From £28” was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Booking.com BV stated that for paid-for search ads, Google selected the dates and price displayed. Whilst they provided pricing and availability data to Google, and were therefore confident that information was correct, they did not have any control over which price was displayed. The dates and prices displayed were dynamically chosen by Google from the data Booking.com provided, meaning they could vary for each user and search. They believed the information displayed in the ad was accurate and not misleading.They provided a screenshot of bookings made in May 2025 which demonstrated that seven bookings were made in May 2025 at the easyHotel Sheffield City Centre for the advertised price. Booking.com stated that providing historical pricing data was difficult without specific reservation details, but they were confident that the pricing data they provided to Google was accurate.
Assessment
Upheld
The CAP Code stated that price claims such as “up to” and “from” must not mislead consumers by exaggerating the availability of the advertised product.
The ASA considered that consumers would understand the claim “easyHotel Sheffield City Centre From £28” to mean that a significant proportion of rooms at the hotel would be available for £28. We understood the ad used Google’s Travel Feeds in Search Ads feature, which utilised pricing and availability data that was provided by the advertiser to display hotel prices with paid-for search ads. For such ads, the lowest available hotel rate was selected, and the advertiser could not choose the price shown or the format in which it was displayed. However, we also understood that Travel Feeds in Search Ads was an optional feature, and it therefore remained the responsibility of the advertiser to ensure their ads complied with the Code. Consequently, we expected to see evidence, in the form of relevant pricing and availability data, to show that a significant proportion of rooms were available at the advertised price across a range of dates. Such data should include information about the number of rooms available at the advertised price, and the number available at other prices, to allow a comparison to be made.
The data Booking.com provided showed that in May 2025, seven bookings were made at the easyHotel Sheffield City Centre for the advertised price. However, we did not receive any other information from Booking.com, such as the number of dates on which rooms were available for £28, to enable us to make an adequate assessment of the proportion of rooms at the hotel available at the advertised price. We therefore considered that the information provided was insufficient to substantiate the claim “From £28”.
Because we had not seen sufficient evidence to demonstrate that a significant proportion of hotel rooms were available at the advertised price, we concluded the claim “From £28” was misleading and could not be substantiated.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 and 3.22 (Prices).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Booking.com BV to ensure that when using “from” price claims in the future a significant proportion of rooms were available at the advertised price, and across a range of dates.
