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OTA misled consumers with Chinese New Year flight offers
Online travel agent Omegaflightsore.com has been reprimanded by advertising watchdogs for advertising New Year flights to China at fares that were difficult to get hold off.
The ad, in February 2018, offered flights to various cities in China from £340, but an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found no evidence that the agency was able to offer flights at the advertised fares.
Booking data supplied to the ASA by Omega related to fares to different destinations and/or to different booking periods.
The ASA said it was also concerned by Omega’s defence that ‘in general, those types of discounted fares would often become fully booked very quickly, especially the cheapest fares, due to seat availability’.
"We were concerned by their comments about the rate at which fares of the type quoted in the ad could become fully booked and considered that, if the quoted prices were very difficult for consumers to achieve soon after the email was distributed, their inclusion was likely to mislead even if it could be established that they were correct and available at the time of publication."
Upholding a complaint against Omega, the ASA told the OTA not to repeat the ad.
"We told Omegaflightstore.com to ensure in future that ‘from’ prices were indicative of the prices available at the time of publication and that they were in a position to demonstrate that a reasonable quantity of tickets were available at those prices," it said.
"We also told them to ensure that qualifications regarding limitations on availability were included with sufficient prominence, and not to include ‘from’ prices that they knew to be very difficult for consumers to achieve soon after the ad was published or distributed."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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