Holiday deals 2022: do they add up or should we be looking more closely?

After investigating holiday deals, Which? found travel firms offering misleading ‘discounts’ and special offers that were cheaper to book directly.

When we investigated in May 2022, Loveholidays was one of the firms that seemed to be misrepresenting discounts. The online travel agent was presenting ‘was’ and ‘now’ prices that weren’t really a discount at all. Instead, they were comparing the price of the holiday we were looking at with the highest priced dates on its site.

While this in itself isn’t a breach of the law, the fact the company didn’t clearly explain to customers that the price wasn’t a discount, it was merely a price comparison, could have been a breach of the Consumer Protection for Unfair Trading Regulations.

Our research into deals generally showed that they aren’t always what they claim. It’s a problem, especially when 32% of Which? members told us they’d be more likely to book a package holiday if it was advertised as a deal. 

With that being a concern, we looked at holidays with some of the UK’s biggest travel companies to check if any were peddling dodgy deals or using dubious marketing tactics. 

Loveholidays’ dodgy discounts on holiday ‘deals’

On a package deal we checked back in May to a five-star resort in Gran Canaria, a £736pp price was struck out and replaced with £443pp.

After clicking on this holiday offer, a loading page appeared claiming that it’s ‘applying Loveholidays discount’. Then the payment page had a discount claim: £589 off the whole package, making it £885 in total for two people.

When Loveholidays told us how it calculates its discounts, in reality, the ‘discount’ is just how much cheaper your chosen dates are compared with the most expensive dates on the site, which are likely to be at the most popular and priciest time of year. This isn’t a like-for-like comparison.

When we first started investigating Loveholidays, we couldn’t see on its booking pages any explanation of how the discounts were calculated. It meant customers couldn’t make their own judgments as to whether deals were compelling.

Under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs), ‘a practice is prohibited if its overall presentation is likely to deceive consumers in relation to a specific price advantage and if it causes them to enter into a transaction that they would not have otherwise’. At that time, we believe that Loveholidays’ approach was misleading and could have been in breach of the CPRs.

The CMA says that, where comparisons are made between prices that are payable in different circumstances such as different dates, these must not imply that the comparison represents a price discount. Not only this, companies must also ‘clearly and prominently identify and differentiate between the two offers’.

See how Loveholidays performed in our package holiday company survey.

Loveholidays co-operated with Which? over its holiday deals

We asked Loveholidays if it would present its deals differently, and while it has continued to work out its discounts based on the most expensive dates, it does now, at least, explain how the was/now prices are calculated.

The travel company told us that even before we had been in contact, it had commissioned an independent review of its website to ensure it was complying with UK consumer law and to ‘improve the clarity and transparency of the messaging’.

Loveholidays added a deal definition to its site, but at first this explanation didn’t appear until you clicked through to the third page of booking the holiday. You then had to hover over a small question mark to see the deal’s calculation. This lacked the prominence advised in CMA guidance.

After Loveholidays told us it is ‘fully committed’ to complying with CMA guidelines and was ‘continuing to test and further refine the customer journey in this area’, it later added the deal explanation to each page on the customer’s booking journey.

Tui holiday deals

Loveholidays wasn’t the only site with deals that sounded too good to be true. Tui’s holiday offers were presented with crossed-out ‘before’ prices and, in some instances, huge discount claims. We found a trip to Morocco being offered as 52% off its original price.

While Tui openly displays how it calculates its deals, we weren’t convinced by its definition of a deal. It says on its website that the discount is ‘today’s online saving on our in-store price, plus any applicable further reduction against this holiday’s launch price’.

The first half of the explanation is a simple calculation. We checked six online holidays at a high street Tui branch and found the prices were exactly the same. 

So we had to take the second part of the deal explanation ‘a reduction against the holiday’s launch price’ at face value, but when was this ‘launch price’? It could’ve been a year ago or more.

Tui didn’t provide us with the exact launch dates for each holiday, and the reference price timeline isn’t explained to the customer, so this deal isn’t transparent.

The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) advice on reference pricing is clear. A website that ‘refers to previous selling prices that were charged many months ago and therefore no longer represent a genuine indication of the current value of the item’ is less likely to comply with the CPRs.

We asked Tui whether it would consider changing the way it presents its deals.

It told us: ‘We operate a dynamic pricing model, which means the cost of holidays can fluctuate throughout the year as they are impacted by many factors. We are already undertaking an internal review of the discount wording and will update this for our customers where required.’ 

Find out how our readers rate Tui in our package holiday company survey results.

Deal savings that cost you upfront

Opodo’s deals, while not misleading, will cost you to access them. It offers a subscription service called Prime for £59.99 a year to gain access to its deals. The problem? You have to fork out for savings you might not even redeem.

Opodo claims that a Prime subscriber will recoup the cost of subscription after two bookings, on average. That does appear possible – certainly if you compare a full-price airline fare available through Opodo with the Prime price. But what if you compare the discounted price with the cost directly from the airline itself?

In one instance, the Opodo Prime discount was 34%, bringing WizzAir tickets down from £89 to £59. But on the airline’s own website, the full price of the flight was only £62. In reality, this is a saving of just 5%.

In another example, it was actually 34% more expensive to book with Opodo Prime than directly.

However, on three Ryanair journeys we recorded we found discounts of at least 50%. But again the reference price was inflated. One flight cost £4.99 with Prime, but why was its ‘before’ price listed as £13.33 when it cost £9.98 to book direct with Ryanair?

Not all of Opodo’s prices come directly from an airline website, which explains the discrepancy in price, but Opodo also adds on a service fee as the middleman.

Opodo told us: ‘In the vast majority of cases, the flight prices available through Opodo Prime are lower than those available anywhere else, including when booking directly with an airline. While there can be rare instances where an airline offers a cheaper price for a given route and day, we’re constantly monitoring our offering to ensure that we continue enabling travellers to access the market’s most competitive prices [...] by allowing them to combine options from 690 carriers.’

What Opodo is doing isn’t illegal, but a deal isn’t really a deal if you have to pay for it.

Opodo isn’t a company you want to regularly book flights with, either. It performed abysmally in a Which? reader flight booking website survey last year, with an overall customer score of just 33%. 

Save yourself the hassle of the subscription fee, which is automatically renewed annually, and go direct. 

Book flights and holiday deals direct

Booking direct also proved cheaper with some Expedia hotel deals. Of the six we recorded on the booking site, we found discounts ranging from 10% to 39%. But in five out of six cases, the hotel was cheaper to book on its own website.

In one instance it was 21% more expensive to book with Expedia, despite the claims of a ‘discount’.

We asked Expedia how it calculates its discounts and were told that it’s up to hotels using its platform to set their own rates and promotions.

It said: ‘We give hotels access for free to revenue management systems so they can track supply and demand in their area in order to remain competitive on rates.’

See how well Expedia performed in our package holiday company, flight booking website and hotel booking site surveys.

Overall, it pays to be wary of deals. Even where holiday sites aren’t actively misleading customers, it might be offering a special deal price that you can find cheaper elsewhere.

How to avoid being duped by dodgy discounts

Check prices directly 

It’s better to book a flight directly with the airline in case anything goes wrong, plus it might be cheaper so make sure you check.

Be wary of hurry deals

If when booking a holiday you’re told to ‘hurry’, it could be a red flag that something’s not quite right. Similarly, if you're prompted that other people are looking at this hotel, remember that they might be looking at different dates.

Is it too good to be true?

Some sites muddy the waters with misleading was/now discount claims, so choose a site that offers clear calculations, so you can decide for yourself whether to book.

Does the deal apply to your trip dates?

If an airline or hotel promises prices from £30, remember those prices might be midweek or off-season. Search for the specific dates you’d like, and walk away if it’s not as good a deal as you hoped.