AN advert for Premier Inn has been banned for making misleading claims about room prices.
The paid-for search ad for the hotel chain, seen on November 4, stated: “Premier Inn Edinburgh – rooms from only £35 per night.”
A reader complained to the advertising watchdog after being unable to find any rooms at the advertised price.
Whitbread Group, trading as Premier Inn, provided the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) with data showing that 377 rooms were on offer for £35 in Edinburgh within the 365-day booking window.
The ASA said consumers would understand the ad to mean that a significant proportion of rooms available across the proceeding 365 days would be available at £35.
However, the data showed that only a small percentage of site nights had rooms on offer for £35.
The regulator said: “We therefore concluded the claim ‘Premier Inn Edinburgh – Rooms From Only £35 Per Night’ had not been substantiated and was likely to mislead.”
It ruled that the ad must not appear again, adding: “We told Premier Inn to ensure that when using ‘from’ price claims in the future, a significant proportion of the advertised rooms were available at the advertised price.”
A Premier Inn spokeswoman said: “As the UK’s best-loved budget hotel brand we always have hundreds of thousands of great value rooms available but we accept that this specific digital campaign wasn’t up to our usual high standard and it was never our intention to be misleading.
“Unfortunately, the issue arose as a result of a £35 offer which proved slightly more popular than initially expected – the rooms sold quickly and we didn’t react fast enough to update the lead pricing in our paid-for ads against the available inventory.
“Enhanced processes are already in place to ensure future compliance and clear verification of any claims and we’re confident this issue won’t arise again.”
It comes just a day after Premier Inn’s owner, Whitbread, announced plans to slash its chain of branded restaurants across the UK in favour of building more hotel rooms.
The hotel and restaurant company has around 840 sites across the UK and owns brands Beefeater and Brewers Fayre.
It revealed the plans in its full-year results yesterday.
Whitbread said it plans to convert 112 restaurants into hotel extensions while closing 126 “loss-making” venues.
It hopes the sales will be completed within the next two years and the restaurants will remain open as usual until they are sold.
If a site is losing a branded restaurant, a new integrated restaurant will be made within the hotel.
The move will leave Whitbread with 387 restaurants that are part of its hotels and 196 branded restaurants.
The hospitality chain said it has already agreed to sell 21 of these restaurants for £28million.
However, it’s unclear exactly which pubs and restaurants are earmarked for closure and where they are located.
The group said the job cuts are still subject to consultation and come from its total UK workforce of 37,000 employees.
It said the move was part of a plan to “optimise” its food and drink offering to add more than 3,500 hotel rooms across its estate and increase “operational efficiencies”.
The cuts come after Whitbread’s pre-tax profit rose 21% to £452million for the year ending February 29.
It follows reports that Whitbread was looking to speed up plans to sell hundreds of its pubs and restaurants.
The chain was said to have marked at least 250 of its 440 pubs and restaurants for sale, most of which are located close to Premier Inn hotels.
Earlier this year, The Sun revealed that over 7,000 pubs are expected to go bust in the next year.
Rising costs and fewer punters through the door has meant that four out of five pubs have seen their profits take a nosedive.
WHITBREAD is a hospitality business and the owner of Premier Inn.
It has around 840 sites across the UK, including restaurants attached to its hotels and standalone venues.
Here is a full list of the brands that Whitbread owns:
