18 hours Ago By [email protected] (Alan Johnson)
Holiday brochures and web sites are often accused of glamourising resorts in a bid too woo customers – as two Brits have found to their despair. Taking to X , Will Marsden (@will_marsden) claims he was "truly catfished" after arriving in Greece to find his hotel's surroundings were a far cry from how he was led to believe they'd look. "Well me and my friend have been well and truly catfished by this 'boutique' hotel in Greece," he ranted in a post that has been seen 2.
4 million times. Sharing side-by-side snaps of expectation versus reality to emphasise his point, Will was soon met with an outpouring of sympathy. Sold on the image of a stunning sun-kissed swimming pool in front of an idyllic mountainous backdrop, the pair were greeted with gloomy skies, sun loungers surrounding dead patches of grass with a villa blocking their view.
READ MORE: I went on holiday to iconic north-west seaside town — I only lasted five minutes in one attraction In a series of follow-up posts, Will appeared to lay the blame with easyJet, as he tagged the airliner and demanded: "Please sort it out, still waiting on a response." easyJet quickly responded, meanwhile, asking Will to message the company privately to discuss his complaint. "This is the worst and I hope you’re bouncing," one X user fumed in response.
"Be mad when you get back home. Hope you can go into denial and carry on!" "Sounds like a Netflix series waiting to happen," quipped a second. "Catfished Europe Hotels.
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Plenty of horror stories!" And a third pondered: "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." Whilst others questioned whether Will had read the reviews prior to making his booking.
"Of course we did," he replied, sharing a four out of five rating after more than 1,000 reviews. "They really weren’t that bad, you get the odd few that were, but overall really good." Defending easyJet, meanwhile, a past visitor to the resort said: "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 provided an update to reveal the issue had been rectified. "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 said. "We booked ourselves into a much nicer villa.
Lesson learnt not to use easyJet again." His second batch of photos were much like those in which he was sold, with a finely-furnished room opening up to a pool with a view of the mountains. An easyJet holidays spokesperson told MEN: "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.".
