I thought I rented a hotel room with a seaside view — but I was royally scammed
Hasta la vista, baby!
A TikTok influencer was “catfished” on a vacation after booking what she thought was a hotel with a scenic seaside view — only to discover she’d been epically scammed.
“We were screwed so hard,” said Sonja Dennig, 28, while recalling the dupe in a video with over 3.6 million views on TikTok, Newsflash reported.
The content creator, who boasts nearly 480,000 followers on the platform, had reportedly booked the accommodation in Westerland, on Sylt, an idyllic island in Germany’s North Sea for a weekend getaway.
“We thought, ‘Wow, what a great view we have,’ but look, it’s just a photo,” recalled Dennig. Newsflash
Dennig joked that she even had a seaside view at night. Newsflash
According to the pictures, the accommodation was supposed to offer a breathtaking view of the coastline.
HAHAHAH #airbnbfail #funny #verarscht
“We were looking forward to discovering this beautiful view,” gushed Dennig, per Swiss news site Blick.
Unfortunately, when the traveler arrived at her hotel, she quickly realized that this picturesque vista was, well, a picture.
Accompanying footage shows Dennig walking towards what looks like a view of an incredible shoreline, only to reveal that it was a seaside poster hung over a dingy basement window.
The property bosses had even used an industrial light to simulate sunshine. The nautical illusion was so immaculate it evoked a virtual vista a futuristic space voyager might upload in their rocket ship quarters to make them less dreary.
“We thought, ‘Wow, what a great view we have,’ but look, it’s just a photo,” recalled Dennig. “We’re just in the basement.”
She joked, “You’re in bed, it’s midnight, but you think it’s either evening or morning sun. It’s pretty amazing.”
TikTok viewers were impressed by the faux view.
“The most amazing thing is that the picture looks totally real,” said one, while another wrote, “Well, you have to let them be creative.”