Abta today welcomed the banning of a video by a claims management firm encouraging holidaymakers to make sickness complaints as being misleading.
The advertising watchdog upheld three complaints made by the travel association against the holiday sickness video which appeared on YouTube in February.
The video on the YouTube channel of ‘TheAccidentGuys’ promoted the website holidaysicknessclaims.co.uk run by Manchester-based firm Claims Legal.
It highlighted in a news report format purported levels of holiday sickness and encouraged viewers who had been on an all-inclusive package holiday in the last three years, and suffered with sickness to go to Holiday Sickness Claims as they may be entitled to compensation.
However, after investigating the complaints made by Abta, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the advert must not appear again in its current form.
“We told Claims Legal to ensure they held adequate evidence to substantiate objective claims in future,” the ASA said.
“We told them not to mislead about: the number of deaths related to holiday sickness; their role in the analysis of statistics in relation to holiday sickness; and about the level of protection afforded to consumers and the likelihood of their claim succeeding.”
The ASA also acknowledged the advertiser’s willingness to make changes to its advertising.
Claims Legal told the ASA it had not received any complaints about the ad, or any of its advertising.
The company did not agree with the points raised by Abta, “but saw the possibility that the message in the ad might on some occasions have been misconstrued”.
The advert was removed from its YouTube account and all associated media platforms, and the firm pledged not to use it in future.
The association said in response to this morning’s ruling: “Abta is pleased to see that the ASA Council has upheld all three aspects of our complaint about the holidaysicknessclaims.co.uk YouTube ad, and that the ad must be taken down with immediate effect.
“The content in this ad was highly misleading and potentially led people to believe, wrongly, that a significant number of deaths were related to holiday sickness; that holidaysicknessclaims.co.uk would be recording claims for official statistical analysis so it was important for people to get in touch; and that recent changes to the Package Travel Directive meant that people would now be more likely to succeed in making a claim as the burden of proof was shifted to the tour operator.
“All these assertions are false, and it is important that people understand this.
“Whatever claims companies may say, people need to realise that making a fake or exaggerated holiday sickness claim is fraud.
“The potential penalties for making a fraudulent claim are extremely serious and may include hefty fines, a criminal record and potential imprisonment.”
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