• Looking for a winter holiday trip? Keep an eye on the prices that appear in the search results for deals on Wakacje.pl.
• The President of UOKiK, Tomasz Chróstny, has charged Wakacje.pl with misleading consumers.
• The entrepreneur is at risk of a fine of up to 10% of their annual turnover.

The company Wakacje.pl from Gdańsk operates a website where it presents offers of package travels in facilities all over the world from various travel agencies. The website offers the opportunity to search for and then buy a family ski trip, a holiday on an exotic island or a tour. The problem is that the prices presented can be misleading. For example: on the search results page, a 7-day stay at a 5-star hotel on the Turkish Riviera cost PLN 2111 per person, while after accessing the website of a particular offer and updating the price - PLN 2558.

- I have charged the company Wakacje.pl with misleading consumers. Price is one of the basic criteria we take into account when planning a trip. Entrepreneurs are obliged to provide reliable information about it, include all its elements and ensure that it is up-to-date. This is the first activity of its kind in the travel services market. We will continue to look into the pricing practices of the industry, regardless of whether they are large travel agencies, small companies or portals acting as intermediaries for the sale of offers, says Tomasz Chróstny, the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.

The UOKiK’s monitoring of the Wakacje.pl website shows that the problem of understated prices in search results concerned nearly two-thirds of the examined offers. In about 10 per cent of cases, in turn, the prices presented in the search engine were inflated. The differences between the prices shown in the search results and on the websites of specific offers ranged from tens to hundreds of zlotys per trip participant.

- Incomplete or outdated prices in the search results also affect the results of sorting the offers by criterion from the cheapest and the results of filtering them into a specific price range. As a result, consumers may get misleading data, e.g. the offer that is actually the cheapest may come far down the list. This can make it difficult to make an optimal choice of service, explains Tomasz Chróstny, the President of UOKiK.

Since July 2022 - while the preliminary proceedings were already underway - the company Wakacje.pl started to include a symbol  next to the search results, and upon expanding it, the information appears that in some cases the price may change. According to the President of the Authority, this does not change the fact that consumers may continue to be misled. A penalty of up to 10 per cent of the entrepreneur’s annual turnover may be imposed for violation of collective consumer interests.

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