Holiday brochures and websites are often accused of glamorising resorts to entice customers – a bitter reality two Brits discovered recently.
Will Marsden (@will_marsden) took to X, claiming he was “truly catfished” after arriving in Greece to find his hotel’s surroundings vastly different from the advertised images. “Well me and my friend have been well and truly catfished by this ’boutique’ hotel in Greece,” he vented in a post that has garnered 2.4 million views.
Sharing comparison photos of expectation versus reality, he soon received an outpouring of sympathy. The pair were seemingly sold on the image of a beautiful sun-kissed swimming pool against a picturesque mountainous backdrop, but instead found gloomy skies, sun loungers surrounding patches of dead grass, and a villa obstructing their view.
In subsequent posts, Will pointed the finger at easyJet, tagging the airline and demanding: “Please sort it out, still waiting on a response.” In response, easyJet promptly asked Will to privately message them to discuss his complaint.
One X user expressed their outrage at Will’s ordeal, commenting: “This is the worst and I hope you’re bouncing,” and added, “Be mad when you get back home. Hope you can go into denial and carry on!” A second person joked: “Sounds like a Netflix series waiting to happen. Catfished Europe Hotels…. Plenty of horror stories!”
A third chimed in with advice: “Hmmmm seems to be a small discrepancy there. I’d take photos and submit a charge back to your bank for goods not matching the description.”
Others were curious if Will had checked out the reviews before booking. “Of course we did,” he responded, pointing out a four-out-of-five rating from over 1,000 reviews. “They really weren’t that bad, you get the odd few that were, but overall really good,” he added.
In defence of easyJet, however, a previous guest at the resort shared: “We went here 2022. We actually really liked it. It was relative for the price we paid. Was it perfect, no. The grass was worn like in your pic, but the pool was certainly clean when we were there. Here are some pics for context. Not all the positive feedback is false.”
Will later updated everyone that the situation had been resolved. “Less than 24 hours after check in, we left that hell-hole, with a ‘sorry’ and £75 refund from @easyJetholidays when the holiday cost £1,000,” he recounted. “We booked ourselves into a much nicer villa. Lesson learnt not to use easyJet again.” And follow-up photos showed a room and pool that much closer matched the initial advertisement.
An easyJet holidays spokesperson told us: “We’re really sorry to hear that Mr Marsden is unhappy with his hotel experience. We regularly review the content provided by our hotel partners to ensure it is an accurate reflection, and we’re looking into this case.
“There’s nothing more important to us than providing brilliant holidays for our customers, so we’ve reached out to Mr Marsden to offer a gesture of goodwill.”