Thomson has been accused of breaking the law over the way it advertises flight availability.
The Tui Travel-owned operator ran an advert suggesting only a few seats were left on a flight but it then released more capacity offered at a much lower price, the BBC found. Bristol businessman Mike O’Keefe complained that he been misled when purchasing seats for family members on a Thomson flight to Florida.
He booked two seats in early August to fly later this month, paying £496 per person after seeing the words “hurry only 3 seats left” next to the price. But the next day he found that more seats had become available selling at £411 on the same aircraft to the same destination.
Consumers’ association Which? said it believed the operator was breaking the law over the flights to Florida . Which? Holiday head of research Rochelle Turner said: “It’s actually illegal under the consumer protection regulations any time someone is forcing you to making a decision.
“For example if you see something that says only three seats available, you’ve been pressured into making an immediate decision and that’s actually based on false information in this case.”
Tui Travel said that the majority of its holidays were sold on seven and 14 night durations. “When the initial booking was made we had very limited availability on the specific duration chosen,” a spokesman told the BBC.
“After the booking was made, our seat availability was reviewed and it became apparent that whilst we had no availability on shorter durations, we did however have greater availability on longer durations and were in a position to be able to amend the durations against some seats.
“The process of converting longer durations to shorter durations and vice versa when availability is low or sold out is common practice within the industry and something that as an operator we do occasionally throughout the season.”
Abta told the BBC that there could be more clarity is the way some offers were advertised.
“But fundamentally if you are talking about price differentials, it’s just as possible that these seats that were allocated from a different class, could go up in price instead of down,” said a spokesman.