A travel firms misleading TV advert claiming summer holidays can be taken in September and October has been banned.
TUIs advert offered customers a summer holiday package to Turkey from £279 per person, while on-screen wording specified the price applied to dates between September 1 and October 31.
Now, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has now ruled the advert was misleading as the dates were unlikely to align with peoples understanding of the term summer holidays.
The advertising watchdog said the ad, which aired in June, must not appear again in its current form.
A voice-over on TUIs TV advert stated: Its not too late to discover Turkey with TUI from £279 per person this summer. Perfect summer holidays that put you in the middle.
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But a viewer claimed the departure dates were not during the summer holiday period and complained the ad was misleading.
TUI said its summer holiday period ran from April 1 to October 31, pointing out that the ad showed both adult-only groups as well as families.
Ad clearance agency Clearcast said the first two weeks of departures were still within summer months and suggested it would have been confusing to spell out that the offer covered summer and autumn.
The ASA said consumers would interpret the term summer holidays to mean holidays available for travel during the calendar months of June, July and August.
It said: We acknowledged Tuis comments regarding their own summer holiday period and the use of both adult and family-oriented groups within the ad.
We also acknowledged Clearcasts comments that the first two weeks of departure were still within the astronomical summer period, which ran into September.
However, we did not consider that a travel period of September and October only was likely to align with consumers understanding of the term in the context of the ad.
It ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form, adding: We told TUI UK to ensure that their future advertising did not mislead by claiming to offer summer holidays if those holidays were outside of the period that consumers were likely to consider as summer.
A TUI spokesman said: We note the ASAs ruling and can confirm that weve already taken action to amend this advert for future use.
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