Influencer Alix Earle has claimed that she and her friends were left “stranded” in Italy after the villa they booked turned out to be a “scam”.
The TikToker, who has been keeping her more than 5 million followers up to date with her travel adventures, shared the setback in a video posted to the platform on Monday.
“We’re stranded in Italy. The house we were supposed to stay in doesn’t exist,” Earle told her followers on Monday, before adding: “Our car service cancelled. It’s midnight. We literally don’t know where to go. 11 girls stranded in Positano.”
In the caption of the video, which has since been viewed more than 4.7 million times, Earle asked: “What do we do now?!?!”
In a follow-up video, Earle revealed that she and her friends had “found a place to stay the night” after learning that their “scenic villa in Italy” reportedly didn’t exist.
In a comment under the video, which showed the group trying to squeeze onto one twin-sized bed, Earle claimed that they’d be “stranded again” in the morning.
On Tuesday, the influencer shared a video explaining the predicament, with Earle telling viewers: “Here’s how we got stranded in Italy on our girl’s trip.”
According to Earle, after leaving their Airbnb in Ibiza, the group made their way to the airport to catch their flight to Positano.
However, after landing in Naples, Earle claimed that the group “learned that our house was a scam”.
In a caption on the video, the influencer sarcastically thanked Booking.com for the issue. “It literally didn’t exist and our car service cancelled on us,” Earle continued, before revealing the group allegedly encountered another issue after they walked out of the airport without retrieving their luggage. “Security was like, you can literally not come back in,” she said.
However, Earle said they were ultimately reunited with their luggage, at which point they “got in a random taxi” and “booked a random hotel room for the night”.
According to the influencer, who filmed the group standing in the lobby of the hotel, she and her friends arrived at the hotel around 2am, and still do not know where they will stay for the remainder of the trip.
“We have nowhere to stay for the rest of the trip, so we were a little stressed out… but we cuddled in our cot,” Earle concluded the video.
In another video posted on Tuesday, in which she invited her followers to watch as she got ready for a beach day in Positano, Earle reiterated the group’s predicament.
“So, last night we found out that the place we were supposed to be staying in was a scam. It, like, literally just doesn’t exist,” Earle claimed, before revealing that they’d found the hotel where they were staying “super last-minute”.
After Earle shared the scenic view from the hotel, she claimed that the group still has “no idea where [they’re] going to be sleeping tonight”.
“But we’re going to figure it out,” she said, as she applied makeup. The influencer then claimed that their night was “a little hectic” and that she’d thought they were being “kidnapped” and was “so scared” the entire time.
Despite the dilemma, Earle expressed her excitement to be going to the peach in Positano, as she noted she really wanted to “get some good Instagram pictures”.
“Who knows where we are going to end up later? In the meantime, I’m going to get a tan and get some cute Instagram pictures,” Earle told her followers after she’d finished applying her makeup.
The influencer’s claim that she and her friends have been left “stranded” has sparked an outpouring of concerned comments from Earle’s followers.
“New fear unlocked,” one person commented, while another said: “Omg be safe please girls.”
Others shared their own similar experiences, with someone else writing: “Never book through third parties! I learned the hard way too.”
Booking.com also responded to the alleged issue in the comments, with the official TikTok account writing: “Hi Alix, we’re sorry to hear about your experience. Please reach out to us via Twitter, FB or Instagram, so our support team can look into this.”
The Independent has contacted a representative for Earle and Booking.com for comment.
