Hotel discount campaigns: a checklist for prices, dates and fences

A hotel discount campaign in Türkiye must show three things in the advertisement: the pre-discount price, and the start and end dates of the sale. Since 1 August 2026 the pre-discount price for a service is the price that applied just before, taken only from the channel where the discount is offered.

The banner is designed, the code is generated, the price is cut. Then someone asks which price the cut is measured against, and nobody has the figure from the day before the campaign opened. This article gives you the two documents that prevent that moment: a dated price log per channel and a fence sheet per campaign.

What does Türkiye's discount advertising rule require from a hotel?#

Since 1 August 2026 an advertisement that announces a discount must state the pre-discount price and the start and end dates of the discounted sale. For services the pre-discount price is the price that applied just before the discounted price. The duty sits in Article 14 of the Commercial Advertising and Unfair Commercial Practices Regulation, amended in the Official Gazette of 1 July 2026 (No. 33297), consolidated on mevzuat.gov.tr (opens in a new tab), and it applies to whatever medium carries the message: a banner on the hotel's own site, a rate-plan name on a booking site, a social post, an email, a printed flyer.

Three elements, not two. "Limited time" and "while stocks last" are not dates. The start and end dates of the sale must be stated, and an end date is a commitment: when the ad says the sale ends on a date, the discounted price must stop being offered on that date, on that channel, including the rate plan and the code.

"Just before" is a record-keeping duty. You cannot reconstruct the reference price after the campaign, so the price on that channel, for that room and rate plan, has to be captured and dated before the campaign opens. The channel rule decides the reference: where a service is sold through several channels, the pre-discount price comes only from the channel where the discount is offered. A campaign on a booking site is not measured against the hotel's own website price, and the reverse.

The regulation sets the duty. How it applies to one campaign, and what follows if it is breached, is a question for your legal adviser, not for a blog post.

Which price counts as the pre-discount price on each channel?#

The price that applied on that same channel, for the same room and rate plan, just before the discount started. Not the rack rate, not last season's price, not another channel's price.

On your own website, the reference is what your site showed for the same room type, rate plan and stay dates the day before the campaign opened. If the public price was raised shortly before to make the cut look larger, the raised price is the reference, so keep the dated screenshot that shows the price was live on that channel. On booking sites, a campaign takes its reference from that site's price for the same room and rate plan: your website's lower price does not shrink the reference, and your website's higher price does not inflate it.

A contracted net rate for a travel agency or corporate account is not a public price. A business-to-business campaign needs its own reference on that channel, and the agency contract decides whether the offer may be published at all. A rate plan created for the campaign has no pre-discount price to point to: either run the campaign on an existing plan, or present it as an offer without a discount claim.

If a channel sells in a foreign currency, the reference is that channel's price in that currency. Article 13 states advertisement prices as "Türk Lirası", "TL" or the lira sign, with listed exceptions; ask your adviser how this applies to each channel. Whatever the answer, keep one dated price log per channel: date, room type, rate plan, price, and who changed it. That log is the evidence behind every campaign you run, and it belongs next to your hotel rate sheet: seasonal prices, supplements and reductions in one table.

Where the reference comes from, channel by channel#

What must the total price in the advertisement include?#

Article 13 requires the price shown to consumers to be the total sale price of the service, including all taxes. A discount is only meaningful against a figure the guest can actually pay. The rule is in force as consolidated on mevzuat.gov.tr, including amendments up to 1 July 2026 (opens in a new tab), and the July 2026 amendment did not change it.

If a tax, duty, fee or charge cannot be calculated because of the consumer's characteristics, such as age, sex or health, or because of the legislation, the advertisement must say clearly that it is not included and show how the total price is calculated. A child reduction that depends on age is the usual hotel case. Sale prices are stated as "Türk Lirası", "TL" or the lira sign; the listed exceptions cover package tours and education services performed abroad, and transport and accommodation services for travel abroad. Whether an inbound campaign aimed at a foreign market falls inside that exception is a question for your adviser.

A "from" price is a claim about the cheapest room. If the discounted price exists only on two midweek nights in November, say so in the same area as the price, not in the terms at the bottom of the page. Any charge that appears only at checkout, such as a service charge or a fee added at payment, breaks the total-price rule and makes the discount look larger than it is. Article 13 applied before the July 2026 amendment and applies alongside Article 14: the two rules are read together, and the discount is announced on a total price.

Which fences keep a campaign from breaking your contracts?#

Fences are the conditions that decide who can buy, for which dates and on which rate plan. Write them before the price, because they are what stops a public discount from undercutting a contracted rate.

The qualification fence decides who may buy: loyalty members, newsletter subscribers, past guests, a named corporate account, or holders of a promo code. A code is a fence, not a disclosure: if the message announces a discount, the pre-discount price and the dates still apply. Then there are three different date fences: the booking window, when the sale runs; the stay window, which arrival dates the rate covers; and blackout dates. The advertisement must not blur them, and the end date of the sale is not the same as the last arrival date.

Product fences are rate plan restrictions: non-refundable or prepaid, minimum stay, room-only versus board, room-type limits, allotment caps and stop-sell dates. Combination rules decide what stacks: one code per booking, no stacking with agency net rates, no stacking with an early-booking discount. State the rules in the offer, not only in the reservation system. Cancellation terms on the campaign rate plan belong in the same place as the price, because a deep discount with unclear cancellation terms creates the complaint the campaign was meant to prevent. If you also run a rate parity check: a weekly routine for direct and OTA prices, the campaign fence sheet slots straight into it.

Before publishing, read the contracts. Agency agreements and booking-site terms can contain rate, visibility or parity clauses, and a public campaign price below a contracted rate can breach them even when the advertising rule is satisfied. Read the terms first and publish second. For the pricing side of the decision, see early booking and non-refundable rates: when do they pay off?

Do personalised offers need a different disclosure?#

Yes. When a price is offered by analysing the consumer's purchasing behaviour and other personal data, the advertisement must show, in the same area, that the price is personalised, the current sale price set by the seller, and the personalised price. The rule is Article 13, paragraph 10, added in the Official Gazette of 1 February 2022 (No. 31737) and in force since 1 March 2022.

What triggers it is a price built from the guest's past stays, booking history, browsing or segment data. A flat code sent to the whole list is not personalised; a price that differs between recipients is. "In the same area" is the operative phrase: the notice, the current sale price and the personalised price sit together next to the price, not in the terms at the bottom of the page. The current sale price must be shown alongside, so the guest can compare the personalised figure with the public one.

Keep the logic in the campaign file: what data fed the price, which segment, which date, next to the price log. Distinguish this from dynamic pricing, which sets one public price for everyone at a given moment; a public price is not a personalised price, and the two disclosures are different, as explained in dynamic pricing in hotels: what it means when people set the rates. Using guest history also raises personal data questions under KVKK, the Turkish personal data protection law. Take advice on both sides before the first personalised send.

What should you review after the campaign closes?#

Who actually bought, at what net price, and what the discount displaced. The review is about the buyers, not about the number of clicks the banner received.

Segment the buyers: new versus repeat guests, by channel and by rate plan. A campaign that moved existing direct bookers onto a cheaper rate bought nothing; it gave away margin on rooms that were already sold. Choose an honest baseline: the same channel and rate plan in a comparable period before the campaign, not a forecast and not last year's peak week.

Displacement is the hardest number: rooms sold at the campaign price that would have sold anyway at the fence-free price. The closest you can get is the count of bookings that used the code and show no earlier enquiry pattern, and that is an estimate; label it as one. Also review cancellations and no-shows on the campaign rate plan, and whether the prepayment or deposit terms held when they happened.

Run a switch-off check: the banner, the landing page, the code and the rate plan are all down after the end date. An advertisement that outlives its stated end date is a compliance problem, not a marketing one. Then file the campaign: price log, screenshots, code list, disclosure text, fence sheet. It is the record for the next campaign and the answer to any question about the last one.

What to do next#

Before the next campaign, build the dated price log for each channel and write the fence sheet, then publish. Every requirement in this article points back to those two documents: the pre-discount price, the start and end dates, the total price and the qualification rules all come from the same record, and the review afterwards is only as good as the record you kept before launch.