Travel influencer blocks friend after getting called out for faking 'solo travel' costs to sell trips: 'You were disrupting my business'

Author image for Inés Soubrie
Inés Soubrie • Writer and Editor
Jul 17, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

There is nothing wrong with being a travel influencer, unless your entire brand is built on pretending your vacations happened differently than they actually did.

Look, social media has never been a perfect reflection of reality. Everyone knows people post the highlights instead of the delayed flights, the overpriced airport sandwiches, or the three hours they spent looking for their Airbnb. That's just the internet. But there's a pretty big difference between showing the best version of your vacation and actively misleading people into believing they can recreate it for half the price.

Solo travel has become incredibly popular over the last few years, and honestly, I completely understand why. There's something quite exciting about booking a trip just for yourself and figuring things out along the way. But it's also expensive. Flights cost money, hotels cost money, and unless you've somehow discovered a magical country where accommodation is free, traveling alone almost always ends up costing more than splitting everything with someone else.

That's why influencers have a responsibility to be honest, especially if they're trying to build a business around giving travel advice. If you're telling people that a week in Croatia costs £350 because you're dividing a four-person Airbnb between imaginary solo travelers, you're not inspiring others; you're setting them up for disappointment. Someone will eventually try to book that exact trip, realize it's nowhere near the advertised price, and wonder what they did wrong.

The woman in this story, originally shared on r/AmITheA**hole, decided enough was enough after watching her friend's "solo travel" page gain followers by cropping other people out of vacation photos and quietly leaving out the fact that every trip was shared with family, friends, or boyfriends. After seeing a destination she had actually traveled to being advertised with a completely unrealistic budget, she publicly corrected the numbers.

Instead of admitting she had been stretching the truth, the influencer immediately blocked her friend and accused her of sabotaging the business. Which raises a surprisingly tricky question: is calling out misleading information worth risking a friendship, or should keeping the peace come before telling the truth?

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    Woman wearing a dress and sunglasses taking a selfie on the Trevi fountain
    via Getty Images

    Woman wearing a dress and sunglasses taking a selfie on the Trevi fountain 

    Subject is a model.

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    I have a friend who is into 'side hustles'. Her latest hustle is as a wannabe travel influencer.
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    She's linked up with a travel MLM, and is billing herself as a travel expert who can also act as an agent for itineraries and routes. Her
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    niche is presenting everything as an affordable solo travel opportunity. She's posted nearly a hundred posts on Instagram of her all around the world,
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    Young blonde woman wearing a hat and sunglasses, smiling on the back of a car.
    via Getty Images

    Young blonde woman wearing a hat and sunglasses, smiling on the back of a car. 

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

     

  • 06
    and more or less every post has a mention of it being a great solo trip, or X restaurant is perfect for dining alone etc. Every
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    single place she has posted however is from a holiday she's either gone on with family, friends, or past boyfriends. This should be obvious to a layman (there are selfies where people are clearly cropped out, and
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    table settings with two meals, despite the copy saying she's eating alone), but she's actually gaining a small audience, as I know solo travelling is becoming more popular.
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    The big issue is that the prices she is quoting are disingenuous - say she's on about a weekend in the south of France from last year, and how it was 'only'
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    around £200 for her flights and accommodation. She went on that holiday with her last boyfriend, and the cost was £300 alone for the hotel they stayed in. She's
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    halving or portioning her share of the cost, and acting like this was her 'solo travel' spend. I work in travel, and keep on dealing with people who are coming with itineraries like this, and are
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    shocked when the cost is sometimes more than double of the social media claims, which bums them out as it's over their budget.
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    A large restaurant table filled with food and white plates.
    via Getty Images

    A large restaurant table filled with food and white plates. 

    Image is only representative of the story

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    When she did this the other day with a holiday I actually went on with her and two friends ('spend a week in Croatia with me for only £350!'), I couldn't help but
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    comment that the Airbnbs we actually stayed in were at least £100 a night, and she was portioning off £25 a night as her share, which couldn't get you a private room in the places we visited.
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    Within the hour, I was blocked from her travel Instagram, and she sent me a voice note saying that I was jealous and trying to disrupt her 'business'. I said
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    that she'd probably do just as well if she was just honest, but did not get a response. Friends are split - some have admitted they were close to anonymously exposing her themselves as they had the full photos
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    they'd been cropped out of, but others have said to keep the peace I need to apologise. I do want to keep her as a friend, but don't
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    know if apologising is best when she was objectively misrepresenting herself.
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    A silver computer sitting on a table with an Instagram account on the screen.
    via Nathana Rebouças

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

    A silver computer sitting on a table with an Instagram account on the screen.

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    Edit: I can see a couple of comments asking the same, so will put it here - I, and several friends, did approach
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    her privately after the first couple of posts, and she said that if anyone asked, she'd tell them the total cost in a DM. We found out a
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    couple of days ago that she had told a customer that she had paid the 'public' price for a trip, which she had actually done with her brother's family (two adults,
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    two kids). This has arguably been the catalyst that has led me to publicly comment on a post.
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    A person doing a trick on a cell phone with statistics of views on the side.
    via Ian Flores

    Subject is not real, only representative of the story.

    A person doing a trick on a cell phone with statistics of views on the side.

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    Two women having a conversation while sitting down at a cafe table.
    via Vitaly Gariev

    Two women having a conversation while sitting down at a cafe table. 

    Subjects are models. 

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    Edit 2: Again, more than one comment on this so I'll respond here - this has very little to do with me viewing her as a business rival or
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    competitor. I work in a bricks and mortar travel agency, she is mainly doing the influencer side of things, with commission-style extras
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    that likely get eaten up because she's part of someone else's downline. I'm not going to set up a competing page, or start
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    posting my own routes, because I work a full-time job in this industry and don't want it to be my free time
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    hobby as well. All of this just means that I am acutely aware of the exact amounts that she is misrepresenting.
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friends unfair influencer entitled money entitled people Mean People
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