Holiday brochures and websites have often been slammed for sugarcoating destinations to lure in travellers – a heartache two Brits recently encountered firsthand.

Will Marsden (@will_marsden) took to social media platform X to vent his disappointment, claiming he had been “truly catfished” after his Greek hotel escape turned out drastically different from what was promised. “Well me and my friend have been well and truly catfished by this ’boutique’ hotel in Greece,” he exploded in a viral rant viewed 2.4 million times.

In a striking contrast shown in side-by-side pictures, the reality hit them as heavy clouds loomed over a drab pool area, dwarfed by dead grass and a villa impeding their expected picturesque mountain view. Will reached out to easyJet in a follow-on posts, tagging the airline and calling out for action: “Please sort it out, still waiting on a response.”

After easyJet responded to deal with the complaint, sympathetic voices quickly emerged in the replies. One commenter replied: “This is the worst and I hope you’re bouncing. Be mad when you get back home. Hope you can go into denial and carry on!”

“Sounds like a Netflix series waiting to happen,” joked a second user, imagining the potential of a show titled “Catfished Europe Hotels…. Plenty of horror stories!”

A third suggested: “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.”

Meanwhile, others questioned whether Will had scouted out the hotel’s reputation beforehand.

Confidently, however, he responded: “Of course we did,” and cited a solid four-star rating from over 1,000 reviews adding: “They really weren’t that bad, you get the odd few that were, but overall really good.”

Some did step in to defend the hotel, though. A responder 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.”

Thankfully, Will’s holiday wasn’t a complete write off. He said: “We booked ourselves into a much nicer villa. Lesson learnt not to use easyJet again.”

In response to this story, 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.”