Badvert of the Month: Jet2holidays
Advert for Jet2holidays spotted at Birmingham New Street station
Company: Jet2holidays
Location: Birmingham New Street train station
Today our public and private spaces are riddled with corporate advertising that incentivises lifestyles that are a threat to sustaining life on the planet, and that promote companies with equally poor environmental, social and human rights records. So it should come as no surprise that some of the advertising that private bodies are displaying is even going against their own business interests. This particular Badvert for an airline company spotted in a railway station is a prime example of advertising that undermines the objectives of the company - in this case Network Rail - who should, in principle, have no interest whatsoever in promoting air travel to faraway destinations.
A summer of high-carbon travel
Summer 2022 has been described as the busiest summer for holiday travel in years since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. After two-three years of covid restrictions which severely impacted foreign travel, we are now witnessing a new frantic wave of holiday-making which has caused considerable chaos amid train stations and airports. The holiday boom has been coupled with staff shortages due to widespread strike action across those networks as workers demand their fair due in the midst of a cost of living crisis and after years of pay stagnation and precarious working conditions.
In the latest months, we have witnessed a flurry of advertising offering sweet deals for holidays across the globe spurred by airline and travel agencies who were keen to make sure that travel to foreign destinations remained a standard holiday of choice.
In this Badvert, the British package holiday and tour agency Jet2Holidays is promoting air travel to Turkey - to millions of railway passengers - offering 22 kg of baggage presumably on its partner airline Jet2.
Grounding air travel and its advertising
It is precisely in this summer of travel chaos that the UK government has decided to release its new plans for aviation to meet ‘net zero’ climate targets. Rather than providing a safe and realistic path for airlines to meet climate objectives, i.e. through managed degrowth of the sector, the strategy is based on fairytale technological deployment and allows the expansion of airline travel. The ‘Jet Zero’ strategy will breach the industry’s own climate targets - which is nothing new since the aviation sector was found in breach of all except one (49/50) of its own climate targets since 2000. Estimates are that with this new Government plan, the sector will add about 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2e equivalent emissions - a 50% increase in emissions by 2050 when the industry should have legally reduced emissions by 78% by that time.
With this in mind, it is now more important than ever to end all forms of advertising that promote business-as-usual flying and tourism abroad, or help greenwash the image of those companies who have no credible plan nor intention to meet climate targets.
Advertising against one’s interest
The other aspect that is quite disconcerting about this particular advert is that it is displayed right at the entrance of a busy train station (Birmingham New Street, owned by Network Rail), meaning many train passengers will be faced to confront it on their train journeys. This, one would reasonably expect, should be at odds with the company’s business aims. Prioritising holidays that require air travel will in no way serve their own interests which should indeed be about attracting people to the network and championing rail travel as a more favourable low-carbon transport alternative to the private car and flying.
This is certainly not the first advert for high-carbon transport that was promoted at this station - and across others in the country. Back in June last year, another giant billboard ad for a gas-guzzling SUV was spotted in the exact same spot at this train station.
It would not take much for Network Rail to change its advertising codes of acceptance and add high-carbon products, including ads for airlines, cars and fossil fuel companies, to the list of advertising that is already prohibited across its network. This straightforward policy change could produce ripple effects by preventing a modal shift in its customer base towards high-carbon modes of transport - which is effectively what is likely to happen with keeping up promoting adverts such as these.
Company Background
Jet2holidays is a British package holiday provider and tour operator founded in 2007. It is a sister company to the airline Jet2.com, the third largest scheduled in the UK. In 2017, Jet2holidays was providing package holidays to nine airport bases in the UK including Leeds, Manchester, Belfast, Newcastle, Edinburgh, East Midlands, Glasgow, Birmingham and London Stansted. Up to that same year, the company had delivered 7 million package holidays.
The company expanded its holiday business empire by setting up different subsidiaries. In 2015, it set up Jet2CityBreaks, focussing on shorter holiday city destinations and Jet2Villas was founded in 2017.
In October 2017, it became the second largest tour operator in the UK, ahead of Thomas Cook Tour Operations.
In summer 2022, Jet2.com - the airline parent company - offered cheaper flights and issued a ‘last chance’ warning to passengers to save 10% on flights. It also added new routes to holiday destinations and promoted flights from as little as £28 to Ibiza and £30 to Menorca.