Consumers ‘can miss out’ with holiday time-limited promotions
by Mail Media Centre, 28-Jun-2012
Consumers are not always getting the best price when they book holidays using time-limited deal promotions, according to a Which? investigation.
‘Hurry Deal’ promtions are increasingly used by travel companies to entice potential customers with the prospect of huge savings for a short time only.
However, in 43% of the adverts the consumer rights organisation looked at we found some of the holidays were available at the same or lower prices after the sale ended, suggesting there was no need for consumers to hurry at all.
It found examples of deals where prices were cut after a sale period ended, and cases where short-term sales were undercut by follow-up sales soon after.
Which? has identified three practices that travel companies use that we believe are misleading:
• Extending deals beyond the advertised deadlines – for example, Reader Offers advertised for an Adventure of the Seas cruise at a saving of £500 if holiday-makers booked before 17 April. However the same saving was still available on 26 April, nine days later
• Cutting prices after the ‘hurry deal’ offer has finished – for example, an advert by Warner Leisure Hotels told people to ‘hurry book by 1 May’ and ‘save up to 40% on selected summer 2012 breaks.’ However, on equivalent deals that appeared ten days after the discount was supposed to end, five prices had gone down even further
• Repeating ‘hurry deals’ one after another – for example, Princess Cruises sent out an email encouraging consumers to book a ‘dream cruise’ in an offer ‘only available for five days’ and three and a half weeks later started a six day sale that offered even better prices on the same cabins.
“No one likes finding out that someone on the same holiday paid less for it. But it’s even worse if you bought your holiday in a rush because the ads told you the prices would be available only for a short time,” said Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd.
“With family budgets squeezed and many people on the lookout for a bargain, travel companies shouldn’t hurry holiday-makers into making decisions that might not give them the best value for money.”
Which? is asking travel companies to stop hurrying consumers into purchasing holidays when it might be in their better interests to wait and research their holidays further.