A holiday price advertised by online travel agent HolidayGems was ‘misleading’, after unexpected charges were added to the cost, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled.
The £1,740.73 price, which included a hotel and flights to Gran Canaria, was listed on the HolidayGems website in December 2024.
A complainant who had booked the holiday was subsequently told the price stated in the ad was no longer available. The customer was told they would have to pay an additional £34 and a £4.95 transaction fee to complete the booking.
HolidayGems Ltd blamed a ‘technical error’ for not making it clear that the price could change, stating that the ad should have included a qualification that it was a ‘from’ price.
In response, the OTA said the qualifier ‘from’ had ‘inadvertently been omitted from holiday listings when consumers accessed them via their internal website search tool’.
HolidayGems said it would fix the error, which had occurred because its website had been redeveloped.
Although HolidayGems acknowledged the technical error, the OTA believed its processes had provisions in place which made it explicitly clear that the advertised price was a quote that was subject to change.
Holiday Gems told the ASA the advertised price was described as a ‘holiday summary’ and not a ‘booking’ and that customers had to accept its terms and conditions before proceeding on the website.
Consumers had the option to cancel if there was a change in price because no booking would have been completed before the finalised cost was confirmed.
However, the ASA upheld the complaint, as it considered consumers would understand the price claim ‘Total Cost: £1740.73’ to mean that amount was the total they would pay for that holiday, notwithstanding the cost of any optional extras.
In its ruling, the ASA stated: “We considered that contacting a consumer to request further payment once an online booking process had been completed would have rendered that quoted price claim misleading.
“Additionally, amending the price once a payment had been authorised, as we understood the complainant had done, would again have rendered the quoted price misleading.
“Because the holiday was not available for the stated ‘Total Cost’ in the ad, we concluded that the price claim was misleading.”
The ASA said the ad must not appear again in its current form, and that HolidayGems must ensure that its price claims were based on genuine prices available to consumers and to ensure the company clearly stated that its prices were quotes that were subject to change.
