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InterContinental is behind misleading Internet sites

May 09, 2004 |

InterContinental Hotels has been accused of misleading customers searching for hotels by setting up dozens of websites that look like independent travel agents.

The world’s largest hotel chain has been accused of misleading customers searching for hotels by setting up dozens of websites that look like independent travel agents but, in reality, direct customers to its own products.

InterContinental, which is owned by the British leisure group Bass and which has 3,500 hotels worldwide, including Crowne Plazas and Holiday Inns, has been condemned by the Association of British Travel Agents for luring customers with websites that at first sight appear to have nothing to do with the company.

The separate sites, with innocuous names such as accommodations.info, discounthotelreservations.co.uk and hotel-deals.com, state only in tiny print at the bottom of the web page that they are actually owned by InterContinental.

Customers visiting the sites are invited to look for hotels in their city of choice. Those who do so might think that they are carrying out a comprehensive search of all available accommodation, as can be done on genuinely independent travel websites.

In fact, all inquiries are directed to InterContinental’s own named search facility and the only results given to the customer are hotels belonging to the group.

The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) said that its lawyers had looked at the sites, which InterContinental calls “destination portals”, and concluded that they were “pretty misleading”.

Get the full story at telegraph.co.uk

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