Center Parcs ad banned for promoting mid-week family holidays for term time
Center Parcs has been rapped by the ASA for an ad promoting ‘4 night breaks from £249 for 4 people’, which were not available during school holidays.
The TV ad began with the line ‘What would you like your children to inherit? A house? A clock? The family silver? Or something a little more valuable?’ but did not state that it was available midweek only and that it was not available during holidays.
Center Parcs said that the ad stated that conditions applied, adding that there were no defined dates that could be referred to as "school holidays" because this varied across the country.
ASA noted that the ad said that it understood the price given was a ‘from’ price and that it did say there were conditions, but by showing a family of two adults and two children in a family village in the advert, it implied that families with school age children would be able to take advantage of the offer.
It said: “We considered that very few of the available dates were likely to coincide with the traditional holiday periods in March/April, July/August, October and December/January, when the majority of schools were likely to plan their holidays in 2012. Because the ad focused exclusively on the benefits of the resort for families with young children, we considered that the omission of information about the available travel periods, which would have alerted viewers to the fact that the offer was unlikely to be available during school holidays, was likely to mislead.”