The ruling, which comes as the ASA prepares to change its guidelines on fluid pricing, followed a complaint about two advertisements concerning a property in Mexico, which it was claimed offered discounts of up to £446pp. The complainant argued that they had never seen this holiday at the implied higher prices.

In a lengthy ruling, the ASA said consumers were likely to expect that the savings represented were genuine against the usual selling prices. However, Tui could not provide evidence of sales at the implied full price from any sales channel.

The ASA added: “We acknowledged TUI’s comments that holiday pricing often changed depending on demand. However, we considered the evidence provided had not adequately demonstrated that the holidays were usually sold at £2,048 and £1,557 by First Choice and Thomson respectively, and therefore the savings claims did not represent genuine savings against those usual selling prices. We concluded that the savings claims were likely to mislead.”

The ruling comes as the ASA prepares to relax rules on fluid pricing. From August 8, revised rules will protect agents from suppliers’ price changes, but in-house sales will still be subject to scrutiny. See this week’s TTG.