The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
TRUSTED ADVICE TELEGRAPH TRAVEL COLLECTIVE
Is that bargain break as good as it seems? A new ASA ruling aims to help holidaymakers decide
HCONSUMER TRAVEL EXPERT
ow can you tell if a discount is genuine or not? Travel has always been an industry addicted to price-cutting – it has to be, because it deals in what are effectively perishable goods. Once a hotel room, an airline seat or a week’s car hire passes its sell-by date, the potential revenue is gone forever – so last-minute offers have always been a key part of the business.
And it isn’t just late deals that have fuelled the discount syndrome. Any travel company knows the value of persuading people to book and pay as far in advance as possible. It gains a huge advantage by doing so – it can bank the money, save on marketing and advertising, and plan ahead with complete confidence. Hence all those early-booking incentives when holidays first go on sale.
The problem for the consumer is that the syndrome has now become so ingrained that we expect almost everything we book to be discounted in some way – and we have no fixed prices or reference points by which to navigate. The same thing is happening in many areas of retail, of course, especially online. But in travel – where we tend to be buying a one-off arrangement that we haven’t booked before – it is particularly tricky to work out whether we are being offered good value.
The concept of a “real” or “base” brochure price, or airfare or room rate has just about disappeared. Everything about holidays is fluid.
But is all this about to change? This week there was an interesting judgment by the Advertising
Standards Authority (ASA) about a complaint against the retail arm of tour operator Thomas Cook. Last November, the complainant had seen a particular holiday advertised on thomascook. com – a 14-night, allinclusive break in Cuba departing in May 2018. The promotion stated: “Total price was £2,736.00 [crossed through] – Saving today (13 per cent) – £350 –
Total price £2,386.00.” He had been monitoring the price for several months, and he decided to challenge
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whether the saving was real. In other words, was the “original” price
(£2,736) a genuine one?
Among other points, Thomas Cook argued – to summarise the ASA report – that the holiday went on sale 17 months in advance of departure and the price was then bound to fluctuate since it was subject to different factors such as promotional offers from their suppliers, exchange rate variations and customer demand.
Thomas Cook said that in this case the launch price “had been set across a range of combinations for the holiday for departures between Dec 13 2016 and Jan 11 2017”.
No bookings had been taken at the launch price but Thomas Cook argued that this did not mean that the price wasn’t a genuine, retail price. I’m pretty certain that the vast majority of
FRED MAWER
CARIBBEAN EXPERT travel companies would have given a similar explanation. However, the ASA upheld the complaint. Its main argument was that that while customers were generally aware that holiday pricing was fluid, they would believe that “by purchasing the holiday at the lower price shown in the ad, the consumer would be making a genuine, meaningful saving against a price that had actually been charged.”
Therefore it concluded that the “savings claim had not been substantiated and was misleading” and ruled that “the ad must not appear again in the form complained of ”. It also reported that Thomas Cook was considering ways of making changes “so that the pricing basis of holidays would be clearer to consumers”.
Of course, this doesn’t mean an end to fluid pricing. Operators and agents