Bed & Breakfast News Issue #46 Spring 2018 | Page 9

Visit our website: | bandbnews.co.uk | 9
Fake discount: refers to
price in a 30 day window
Fake discount
Urgency
(and in such cases, you tell us that OTAs
routinely pressure B&Bs to waive their
proper charges for the OTA’s ‘client’)
They create misleading urgency by
statements like “only 2 rooms left!” (when
there may be more, eg by booking direct),
“in high demand”, “booked 6 times in the
last 24 hours”, or “3 people are currently
looking at this property”, and by false
discount statements like “-41% TODAY!”
when the OTA has no discount on that
room today.
Around the time we wrote the above
in our Summer 2017 issue, we filed five
formal complaints with the UK competition
regulator, the CMA. We also complained to
Booking.com about that notorious TV ad.
The TV ad has now been banned by the
Advertising regulator (ASA) as ‘misleading’
– see p6.
False: there may be
more rooms left at hotel
Fake discount
The five formal complaints
we filed with the CMA were:
1) Against “rate parity” (narrow MFN)
clauses, which prevent hotels/B&Bs from
discounting to their own clients from their
own websites;
2) Against false discounts created by OTAs
to mislead consumers
3) Against false availability statements
created by OTAs to mislead consumers
(eg “Only 1 room free!” when there are five)
4) Against misleading, non-transparent and
manipulated default search rankings by
OTAs, and
5) Against forced (non-optional contract term)
bidding by OTAs on hotel & B&B names
with search engines - so the OTAs always
get top search listing in the B&Bs own
name, taking commission on every click.