By DAILY MAIL REPORTER


Craning for a better view: The beach at the JW Marriott Ihilani Resort on Oahu, Hawaii looks distinctly different when the building site next door is revealed


It's an all too familiar scenario. After months of planning a holiday, you finally arrive at your destination only to find the palm-fringed beach and gourmet buffet you've been dreaming about are nowhere to be seen.

A new website claims to show holidaymakers the reality at hotels and resorts, promising to expose holiday companies who 'airbrush' hotels and resorts in a bid to make them seem more attractive.

An undercover team from Oyster.com are charged with catching out holiday resorts that use doctored photographs or image trickery to promote their getaways.
So far, the team has found some eye-opening examples.


Images used to sell The Essex House Hotel in Miami's South Beach, for example, have had traffic lights and street signs removed while the deserted beach scenes depicted in glossy photos of the Gran Bahia Principe Punta Cana resort in the Dominican Republic are seemingly a far cry from what holidaymakers actually experience upon arrival.

Other examples on the site include misleading images such as a huge department store cropped out of a photograph of a swimming pool in LA and huge industrial cranes cut from a beach scene in Hawaii.

One picture by the Hyatt Hotel in Washington DC even shows the White House seemingly metres away when on closer inspection the President's residence was a mere speck in the distance.

Site editor Kelsey Blodget said the website was set up so travellers could see the truth about a hotel as they often misrepresent their properties.

She said: 'We came up with the Photo Fakeout series as a way to visually demonstrate what we do: show travellers the truth about a hotel. If you go and buy a car, you can test drive it, but you can't return a vacation.Travellers deserve to know what they can really expect when they arrive.


Pull the other one! The creative team behind the Sofitel hotel in Los Angeles have managed to eradicate an entire Macy's department store from their images...


Photo fiction: A promotional shot of a deserted beach at the Gran Bahia Principe Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic doesn't match the reality; a beach that is swarming with holidaymakers and sunloungers


Now you see it, now you don't: Street signs and traffic lights mysteriously disappear on images trying to sell The Essex House Hotel in South Beach, Miami to potential guests...as the hotel image below reveals






Sand - and other stuff - between your toes: Guests at the Barcelo Capella Beach Resort in the Dominican Republic might expect a pristine beach...but a carpet of seaweed is more likely


'Some of the tricks, such as staging and cropping, are less egregious, but we've been shocked by how many hotels outright Photoshop their images.'

The website send undercover reporters to stay as guests at hotels, and they take hundreds of photographs of write in-depth reviews of every property covered.

They have taken over 50,000 photos across thousands of hotels in 23 popular tourist destinations across America and the Caribbean since they began in June 2009.


source :dailymail