Travelodge has been criticised for unethical advertising after leafleting customers' cars parked at rival hotels.
The budget hotel chain put leaflets titled "Are you being ripped off?" on the windscreens of cars one morning last week.
Four star-rated Crewe Hall in Cheshire, part of Marston Hotels, was the recipient of the budget hotelier's forceful advertising tactics.
"It's not the competition we are upset about," said Marston's sales and marketing director, John Cotter. "They can advertise whatever they want, but to leaflet another hotel's car park asking customers if they're being ripped off is unethical."
A Travelodge spokesman said: "The nature of our hotel revolution campaign is clearly highly competitive and we are determined to communicate our low prices to everyone's customers - not just ours."
He added: "If the offended hotel companies were focused on aggressive price cuts instead of rises, we would all achieve our goal of growing the market and making hotels available to everyone."
A spokesman for the Advertising Standards Agency said: "We can only look into this matter if a complaint is lodged. We would then establish whether the advert was within the spirit and letter of the code."
* Last month Travelodge took out a full-page advertisement in The Times, accusing Hilton, Marriott, Swallow and Macdonald hotels of misleading customers by advertising price-per-person rather than price-per-room rates.
By Emily Manson
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