Ambassador Cruises admitted to advertising watchdogs that it shouldn’t have included its Norwegian Fjords cruise in its Set Sail & Save, which offered 30% off for second guests in February.
The offer, which was emailed to customers, said the 30% off applied to cruises in the Mediterranean, Norwegian Fjords ‘or beyond’.
However, a customer complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the advertised discounts did not represent genuine savings and challenged whether the ad was misleading.
Ambassador confirmed that ‘an administrative error’ was made and that the Norwegian Fjords cruise featured in the ad should not have been included in the promotion on 13 February 2025.
It said: “The 30% Off campaign was reviewed and approved internally in December 2024, and the Norwegian Fjord cruise was originally scheduled to be included in the promotion. However, following an internal review, the fares for that particular cruise were reduced, so the cruise should have been removed from the campaign.
“Owing to an error, the promotion of 13 February 2025 continued with the inclusion of the cruise. The subsequent pricing under the campaign led to the pricing error featured in the ad. As soon as the error was identified and reviewed internally, the cruise was removed from the promotion on 3 March 2025.”
It added that, as a result of this complaint, it had reviewed its internal process and enhanced its internal pricing review policy.
The ASA said that the complainant had provided two images of the Norwegian Fjord cruise listing on the Ambassador website, which showed that before the promotion, the price per person was ‘from £879’ and after the promotion began, it appeared as ‘from £1,009 first person, £709 second person’.
It said: “We acknowledged Ambassador Cruises’ response that the cruise had been erroneously included in the promotion and welcomed their action to correct the error.
“However, because Ambassador Cruises were unable to supply evidence that showed that £1,009 was the established usual selling price of an individual ticket for the cruise, and that the price reduction represented a genuine saving for consumers, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”
The ASA told Ambassador the ad must not appear again in the form complained of, and it must ensure that future savings claims don’t mislead by including prices that are not the usual selling price of its cruises.
