When will travel companies learn that the ad watchdogs don't like misleading emails

Jet2.com is the latest travel firm to fall foul of the UK's Advertising Standards Authority.

The latest round of adjudications handed down from the ASA includes a wrap across the knuckles for the low-cost airline for an email it sent which said discounted fares were available on certain flights.

Two potential passengers complained when they couldn't find the low fare on the Jet2 website.

Jet2, in its defence, said the fares were available and provided documentation to the ASA to prove it.

What went wrong here, then? Well, Jet2 didn't mention that the full fare would also include a "complusory fuel supplement charge".

It seems that all Jet2 needed to do in order to appease the ASA is add the word "from" in front the advertised price as only 33% of the fares on each flight were available at the discounted rate.

Read the Jet2 ASA full ruling.

Anyway, Ryanair have learned that you can push the ASA into fits of apoplexy and get a nasty ticking off. But sometimes, as someone mentioned a few months ago, that rebuke is worth it if you can get shift a heap of tickets quickly through a sale.

We are, of course, not suggesting that Jet2 did this.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Perspective again please

Plenty and rather mixed coverage around the web today regarding the second anniversary edition of the Hitwise-IMRG Hotshops list.

The quarterly report of the top 50 UK online retailers is a handy benchmark of whose flying or dying in the online world, albeit from a share of overall web traffic rather than individual performance.

So what did the May 2008 report reveal, compared to that of May 2006?

There are currently eleven travel brands amongst the top 50 – a list topped unsurprisingly every quarter since it began by Amazon.co.uk.

TravelMole led with how Thomson Holidays is creeping up on easyJet as the most popular travel brand in the UK, while E-Tid said ‘Travel companies lose web presence’. [both require registration]

The report indicated that almost all the leading travel brands – with the exception of Thomson – had seen in a decline in position since the report began two years ago:

EasyJet – 8 to 10
Expedia – 7 to 12
Ryanair – 9 to 14
Lastminute.com – 12 to 17
BA – 11 to 19
Thomas Cook – 18 to 25
First Choice – 20 to 29

Quite a number of travel brands have dropped off the list:

MyTravel (for obvious reasons)
BMIBaby
XL.com
FlyBe
Jet2
InterContinental Hotels
Monarch Airlines
Opodo

The only newcomer in travel:

TravelRepublic

The apparent slump in the performance of travel websites led the Financial Times to headline with ‘Airlines lose web customers’. Lose?

What the FT failed to do is explain in detail why this has happened.

A call to Hitwise’s Robin Goad, co-author of the list, confirms the obvious: travel was an early adopter of e-commerce and consumers, likewise, felt comfortable with booking via the web, thus why so travel sites commanded a large share of the top 50.

In the past two years, however, other retailers have emerged – some traditional offliners, others created to service existing markets but purely online – and have attracted new users.

So while growth in online travel bookings may be slowing compared to other industry verticals, it is by no means declining.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: hitwise IMRG hotshops retail

Yorkshire downs tools to grab free flights

PING! Email arrives from Jet2.com.

Apparently 13% of the population in Yorkshire were sufficiently moved enough a few days ago to enter an online competition to win free flights on the airline.

The story behind this astonishingly high figure is absolutely true.

Over 500,000 sun-seekers from Leeds, Bradford et al logged on between 10am and 4pm on Tuesday this week to claim one of the 10,000 free flights. Apparently only 10,000 of those that entered were from outside Yorkshire.

The competition was part of fifth birthday celebrations for one of UK's biggest regional airlines.

Rumours that the region's economy will take weeks to recover after thousands of workers abandoned their posts on Tuesday have yet to be verified.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: yorkshire jet2

Richest in travel

The annual Sunday Times Rich List (all 1,000 of them) has been published.

Clearly the hotel industry is the way to go. And whoever said Duncan Cameron and Simon Nixon (of Money/TravelSupermarket fame) are not sitting on a goldmine...

Those trousering it in the travel and web-related sectors include:

• Sir Richard Branson (Virgin) - £3.1 billion
• Nadhmi Auchi (General Mediteranean) - £2.6 billion
• Lord Paul and family (Contemporary Hotels) – £1.5 billion
• Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and family (Easy Group) - £1.3 billion
• Naresh Goyal (Jet Airways) – £512 million
• Duncan Cameron (MoneySupermarket and TravelSupermarket) – £480 million
• Simon Nixon (MoneySupermarket and TravelSupermarket) – £480 million
• Sir Rocco Forte and family (Rocco Forte Hotels) – £450 million
• Jasminder Singh and family (Radisson Edwardian Hotels) – £350 million
• Geoffrey Kent (Abercrombie & Kent) – £253 million
• Michael Gooley (TrailFinders) – £240 million
• Surinder Arora and family (Arora Group Hotels) - £225 million
• Andrew Davis (Von Essen Hotels) – £210 million
• Harpal Matharu (Globalgrange Hotels) – £207 million
• David Babai (Gullivers Travel Associates) – £200 million
• Peter Harris and family (Bourne Leisure) – £195 million
• Sir Michael Bishop (BMI) – £185 million
• John Cook and family (Bourne Leisure) – £180 million
• Sir Bernard Schreier and family (Danubius Hotels) – £174 million
• Michael and Xochi (Bebo) – £150 million
• Ian McGlinn (Hotel du Vin) – £146 million
• Nick Denton (First Tuesday/Moreover Technologies) – £140 million
• David Crossland and family (Airtours) – £124 million
• Jamie Moffatt and family (A T Mays) – £108 million
• David Seymour and family (Pomme d’Or) – £100 million
• Edward Faith and family (Gullivers Travel Associates) – £100 million
• Uzi Kattan (Gullivers Travel Associates) – £100 million
• Rahul and Rita Sharma (Worldwide Journeys) – £99 million
• Peter Stephens (Lotus Group) – £93 million
• Walduck Family (Imperial London Hotels) – £92 million
• Philip Meeson (Jet2) – £90 million
• Lord Daresbury and Greenall family (De Vere Hotels) – £85 million
• Maurice Segal (Modern Hotel/Expotel) – £80 million
• Giuseppe Pecorelli (Exclusive Hotels) – £78 million
• John Marston (ex-hotelier) – £76 million
• Dinesh Dhamija (Ebookers) – £75 million
• John Boyle (Direct Holidays) – £75 million
• Gulshan and Asif Bhatia (Hilton Paddington/Hyatt Regency Birmingham) – £70 million
• Tej and Bobby Dhillon (Dhillon Hotels) – £70 million

Kevin May, editor, Travolution