On the Beach rapped over 'misleading' savings claims in poster ads

On the Beach provided the ASA copies of its survey, which asked consumers how much they “considered they had saved” booking with the OTA, with options ranging from nothing to “saved over £500”. Respondents were also asked to choose from just four holiday types.

“We noted consumers were not asked to give any specific details about the holiday they had booked and whether the money they had saved was based on an identical holiday from a different company or a similar type of holiday,” said the ASA in its ruling.

It also further criticised On the Beach for the ambiguity of its questioning, which would likely not have resulted in all respondents reporting their savings on the same basis.

“The survey did not require consumers to provide any specific information about the basis of their savings, for example, they did not have to state if the money they saved was against exactly the same holiday or how much it had been sold at by a different provider,” read the ruling.

“Further, we considered the savings question, ‘When you booked with On the Beach recently, how much money would you say you saved by booking with us?’ was phrased in a leading manner, and that could have led survey respondents to assume that they had saved money when they perhaps did not know.”

The ruling added: “We also understood from the data the number of customers who received the survey was much higher than the number stated in the ad and that the 92% claim in the ad was based on the 37,439 people who had responded to the survey.

“We considered it was likely a proportion of the consumers who did not respond to the survey had not or were not aware if they had saved money when booking their holiday through On The Beach.

“We therefore considered that the claim in the ad was misleading because the percentage of the total number of consumers surveyed who had saved money was likely to be much lower than the 92% stated in the ad.”