A compliant over “misleading” pricing for children against Jet2holidays has been dismissed by the advertising watchdog.
The case centred on four examples of searches for holidays for two adults and three children on the operator’s website in June.
The child age advertised varied in each advert and a customer complained whether published pricing for different age groups was misleading.
Jet2Holidays told the Advertising Standards Authority that it used the phrase ‘child age’ to clarify what age constituted a child for the purposes of each hotel, but it did not indicate that all child places would have the same cost.
The company confirmed that not all children would necessarily cost the same.
Some hotels may set a ‘child A’ price, which was usually for younger children, and then a higher ‘child B’ rate for older children.
For that reason, when some searches were performed, where the child age was changed between the searches, the ‘from’ price of the holiday may increase.
The rates in all four examples were ‘from’ prices that were indicative of what a consumer was likely to obtain once they had input their details, including the number of travellers, their ages and dates that they planned to travel.
There were many factors which could determine the price, according to the operator. The price given was only displayed after that information had been entered by consumers, and therefore consumers would not be misled by the prices or their presentation.
Rejecting the complaint, the ASA said it “considered that the omission from the ad of the variance in child prices did not mislead as to the child age for each resort”.
It its ruling, the ASA “considered that consumers would understand that there were a range of reasons that could factor into the price that they were provided with and that different resorts may have different pricing for children of different ages.
“We further considered that consumers would understand that the price that they were provided with after putting their details, including the age of each child, into the website was not a static price.
“The price could fluctuate based on availability, demand and other factors and was therefore a price that had been generated for their prospective booking, rather than a fixed price for the number of travellers and mixture of adults and children.
“We acknowledged that some consumers may be interested to know whether hotels had different pricing categories for children of different ages.
“For example, in the situation suggested by the complainant where two families made a simultaneous booking, but their children were of different ages, the total cost of the holiday differed between them.
“However, we considered that the omission of that information did not make the ‘child age or ‘from [£X]’ price misleading, because the price that was generated was for the individual who was making the booking based on the information that they had input and was therefore accurate for their purposes.
“We therefore concluded that the ads were not misleading.”