A Secret Escapes advert promoting a time-limited hotel discount has been banned for being misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The ASA upheld a complaint about a Secret Escapes advert offering ‘up to -46% off today’ a Bournemouth hotel, with prices marked down from £233 to £135 per room per night.
The complainant challenged whether the discount claim was misleading.
The ASA said: “We understood that the price £135 represented a 42% discount from the room rate of £233 rather than 46%, and that there was no correlation between the ‘from’ price and the ‘up to’ percentage discount seen in the ad.”
The ASA said consumers would interpret the ‘up to -46%’ as a discount on the hotel’s usual price, adding: “Because the percentage discount had not been calculated against the standard price of the hotel room, and the presentation of the ‘from’ price and the percentage discount suggested they related to the same figure, we concluded that the savings claims were misleading.”
Secret Escapes said the lead in price and highest discounts were applicable across ‘a significant number of check-in dates’ within the offer period. It added dates with the cheapest ‘from’ price would not necessarily have the highest discount.
It also explained that when calculating savings, it accounted for additional benefits which were not available on other sites, such as late check-out and dining credits, which were explained by two information icons displayed near the price and discount.
The ASA said “We told Secret Escapes Ltd to ensure that price comparisons were not misleading, for example through the addition of the cost of extra benefits to a comparative price. We also told them to make the basis of price comparisons clear in their advertising.”
Secret Escapes said it took transparent pricing practices seriously, and had reviewed the website following receipt of the complaint, amending the explanatory wording next to the ‘up to’ and ‘from’ offers to make it clear the value of additional benefits were included in the calculated discount.
Secret Escapes said it was happy to work with the ASA in the future to ensure consumers were not misled.
