ASA Ruling in Crackdown on Availability of Advertised Hotel Prices

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that hotel company Hilton Worldwide Ltd mislead consumers by publishing two paid-for search ads that could not be substantiated.

The first advertisement stated, “Hampton by Hilton Hamilton Park From £68”, and the second stated, “Best Rates When Booked Direct […] Hampton by Hilton Newcastle From £59”. The advertisements were picked up by ASA’s Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively search for online ads that may not be complaint.

Hilton Worldwide Ltd stated that both ads were part of Google’s Travel Feed for Search Ads product that utilised dynamic pricing, but that the product had malfunctioned, preventing the relevant date from being displayed. Hilton further provided historical Google data demonstrating that the advertised rates were bookable at the respective hotels when the advertisements were identified by ASA. However, as Hilton could not provide data to show how many rooms were available at the advertised prices, ASA felt the information provided was insufficient to substantiate the claims.

ASA upheld that the pricing claims in the ads were misleading as they had not seen sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the pricing and availability was across a range of dates, as required to support such claims.