The complaint referred to the brand’s Australia and Pacific 2021-2022 brochure, which contained text under individual holidays which read: "Trailfinders Offers – 3rd night free – free room upgrade".
Further on in the brochure, on page 208, text stated: "Due to the complexity, dynamism and varied restrictions that apply to special offers, we only give a general indication of available offers. Please call for full details."
Further on it stated special offers can be "withdrawn or amended at any time".
The complainant, who chose a holiday on the basis of the offers but was told they were not available on the chosen dates, challenged whether the ad was misleading.
In response, Trailfinders said the brochure was printed on 12 October 2020 and was distributed from 5 November 2020. It had not been known at the time of printing the time that would follow would be one of "extremely limited" travel opportunities to Australia due to the pandemic.
They said offers would have been available for specific dates and were usually valid for a limited number of rooms only. They supplied the dates for which the "3rd night free" and "free room upgrade" offers were valid for the holiday the complainant was interested in. The offers were mutually exclusive.
They said special offers in the brochure were a general indication only of what was available at the time of going to press and were subject to the "complex and dynamic" nature of pricing in the travel industry.
The ASA said consumers seeing the ad would expect to receive the "3rd night free" and "free room upgrade" offers if they booked the holiday advertised.
A spokesperson for the association said: "We acknowledged that the price was flagged on that page as ’Guide Price’ with the instruction to ‘Call for latest price and offers’.
"However, while that was likely to be interpreted by consumers to mean that a brochure price might be subject to change and that other offers might become available, we considered consumers were unlikely to understand it to mean that restrictions and exclusions applied to the offers listed against the holiday."
There was therefore no indication on the holiday page that the offers were restricted, both in terms of certain dates being excluded and the offers being mutually exclusive.
Because the ad did not make it "sufficiently clear" the offers were subject to restrictions and did not include significant information about the restrictions, the ASA concluded it was misleading.
The ASA’s ruling read: "The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Trailfinders Ltd to ensure that ads made it sufficiently clear if offers were subject to restrictions and included significant information about the restrictions."
