Booking.com admits advertised rates not always accurate
Accommodation website Booking.com admitted it was unable to guarantee its advertised hotel rates were 100% accurate during an investigation by advertising watchdogs.
Due to the amount of data that needed to be updated regularly, it said it was impossible to maintain 100% accuracy.
The Advertising Standards Authority was investigating a complaint by a customer who queried whether a hotel room was available at the price advertised on Booking.com.
The ad, for the Portland Heights Hotel & Leisure Centre, said the room was £102, a saving of £235 for two nights.
Booking.com said the ad contained a "real-time" rate based on the check-in/check-out data stored in the complainant’s cookie.
It said the vast majority of its re-targeted ads displayed accurate rates and that the cache that fed the prices to those ads was updated when rates became unavailable.
However, occasionally there would be differences between the data stored in the cache and the data stored on its booking system.
It said consumers would (or should) understand that a price might become unavailable due to fluctuations in the room rate and limited availability.
The ASA upheld the complaint and ruled that the ad was misleading. It said that customers would expect the price shown to be available at the time they saw the ad.
It told Booking.com to ensure it held adequate evidence to demonstrate that hotels were available at the advertised prices in future.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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