Who: The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and Vacaciones eDreams, S.L. t/a eDreams
Where: United Kingdom
When: 8 January 2025
Law stated as at: 11 March 2025
What happened:
The ASA has investigated two paid-for online display ads for eDreams, an online travel agency. The first ad, seen on 3 June 2024, featured an aerial shot of a jungle and text that stated, “PUERTO RICO A sustainable destination”. The second ad, seen on 15 July 2024, stated, “Discover our sustainable trips”. The ASA challenged whether the claims of “sustainable destination” in the first ad and “sustainable trips” in the second were misleading.
In its response, eDreams said that it believed consumers would interpret the claim “sustainable destination” as taking into account the destination’s future economic, social and environmental impact, and consumers would not understand the claim as including the environmental impact of reaching the destination in question.
The travel agency said that it had assessed whether a destination was “sustainable” based on eight criteria, which were whether the destination: (1) had certain official certifications, for example, under the Global Sustainable Tourist Council or UNESCO; (2) informed its intended audience of its sustainability commitments; (3) had a dedicated team ensuring it stayed up-to-date with sustainability guidelines; (4) was taking steps to implement the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals; (5) was aligned with the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism; (6) offered accommodation in rural areas; (7) offered social and environmental volunteer-based experiences; and (8) whether the destination’s sustainability initiatives were audited.
It also argued that it did not limit its sustainable destinations list to those that did not require air travel. Doing so would have, in the view of eDreams, excluded lots of destinations and defeated their goal of encouraging consumers to consider the sustainability of their chosen destination.
The ASA, in its assessment, leant on the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct and Promotional Marketing requirement that the basis of environmental claims must be clear, and that absolute environmental claims must be supported by a high level of substantiation. Neither ad was qualified to explain the basis of the claim “sustainable”. The ASA considered that without this required qualification, the claims were ambiguous and unclear and therefore misleading.
Furthermore, the claims were absolute, and so a high level of substantiation was needed to support them. The ASA acknowledged that eDreams had a list of criteria that they used to assess whether or not a destination was “sustainable”, but said that, to support the absolute claims in the context in which they appeared, it needed to see evidence to demonstrate that Puerto Rico, as a destination, and the “trips” offered by eDreams there, were not environmentally damaging. The basis of the absolute “sustainable” claims had not been made clear, so their meaning was unlikely to be understood. As such, the ASA ruled that the ads were likely to be misleading.
Why this matters:
This ruling is of particular importance because it forms part of the wider piece of work the ASA is conducting around travel industry advertising and, specifically, the environmental claims being used within the travel and transport sector. The ASA is making it clear that any claims around the sustainability of travel must be substantiated by robust evidence and the evidence must be broad enough to cover the making of any absolute claims. This ruling makes clear that the impact of the act of travelling – including, flying – to a “sustainable” destination needs to be taken into account when assessing the overall sustainability of that trip.
