Resorts Across Europe Scramble To Stop Pool Chair Towel Hogs — After Court Rules Missing Loungers Mean Refunds

Resorts across Europe are scrambling to put out more beach chairs after a German package tourist successfully sued because their hotel didn’t have enough loungers for guests.

A German traveler sued their package tour operator that sold them a vacation, arguing that the advertised resort experience was defective because the hotel allowed other guests to monopolize loungers with towels. The Hanover district court (AG Hannover, 527 C 9826/25) found that:

• The German family booked an 11-night package holiday to Kos, Greece, in August 2024, at the Grecotel Kos Imperial, through TUI Deutschland for €7,186 (~ $8,500).

• The resort had six pools and a large number of loungers, and hotel rules banned reserving loungers with towels. However, guests were allegedly putting towels on loungers from around 6 a.m., then leaving them unused for hours at a time. Even when the plaintiff got up early and searched for about 20 minutes a day, his family generally could not get loungers.

• The tour company pointed fingers at the hotel, but refunded €350 on their own. The court found the guest was entitled to €986.70 total, so the tour operator had to pay the remaining €636.70.(15% reduction of the daily travel price for 10 affected days).

This experience is common! Here are guests literally lining up at 6:30 a.m. – waiting 90 minutes for the hotel’s pool gates to open at 8 a.m. – so they can storm this relaxation area like it’s Black Friday at Walmart in order to avoid missing out on a chair for the day. In Tenerife, Spain I suppose they’d call this “the running of the guests.”

@chloeturner_1 Another day another sunbed war 😂 #holiday #tenerife #playadelasamericas #sunbeds ♬ original sound – Chloe Turner

German law treated it as a Reisemangel — a travel defect — under German package travel law. German package tourists having package travel law, and arguing that the hotel product was defective, may be the most German thing ever.

Ultimately, a guest on a package holiday can reasonably expect the hotel amenities to be usable in practice, not just exist in theory. Relaxing by the pool is part of the vacation value. But if the loungers are effectively unavailable because the hotel permits systematic towel reservations, then the pool lounger amenity is not being delivered as promised.

• The tour organizer doesn’t have to provide one lounger per guest.
  
• But it must ensure an “appropriate” or “reasonable” relationship between guests and usable loungers.
  
• If sufficient supply of chairs exists, but they’re made unavailable by guests blocking them with towels, that’s not enough.
  
• According to the court, the traveler is not expected to remove towels left by other guests themselves – and risk fights between guests.

And it’s the tour operator held liable, not the hotel, because under travel package rules, the organizer is responsible for proper performance of the travel services included in the package. The hotel was the tour operator’s Erfüllungsgehilfe under German law (performance agent).

Now, this is not binding precedent in the U.S. or British common law sense. Germany is a civil law system. Prior cases can be persuasive, but ordinary lower court decisions are not binding. This was an Amtsgericht decision, a low level trial court, so there’s little precedential value. However, it’s not the first time that this same court has ruled this way over hotel pool loungers and the same penalty was applied in the earlier 2023 case.

Now, though, resorts in Europe “are scrambling to change rules and policies regarding the availability of sun-loungers.” This means they’ll need:

• Real enforcement of no-reservation rules, not just decorative signs.
  
• Pool attendants removing towels after 30–60 minutes of non-use.
  
• More loungers or more shaded seating where demand routinely exceeds supply.
  
• Reservable chairs
  
• New contract clauses between tour operators and hotels, requiring properties to enforce pool chair policies and indemnify the tour operator for defect claims.

Unfortunately, I think this practice some hotels are adopting is even worse though:

Twice a day they sound a horn and if you’re not at the lounger, all the items are removed to lost property.

I try to avoid what I think of as ‘resort factories.’ Once a vacation requires early alarms, towel strategy, and a run for scarce lounge chairs, the hotel has already failed at the basic job of making guests feel at ease. If you have to get down to the beach or pool before 8 a.m. to have any hope of getting a chair, is it even a vacation?

At Hyatt Regency Aruba you need to reserve beach and pool chairs in advance. Not only that, you have to claim them by 9 a.m. each day. If you oversleep, they give away your reservation. If you do not have a reservation, you need to appear by 9:05 a.m. to grab any lounger bookings that went unclaimed.

The term ‘resort factory’ first struck me years ago at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman. It was supposed to be a nice property, commanding room rates over $1,000 a weekend night in peak season. But if you didn’t put out that book early, you’d wind up four rows back from the beach.

Here’s one dad sprinting from lounge chair to lounge chair, putting a towel on each to mark territory for his family.

Would you buy a plane ticket and pay for a resort – knowing you’d have to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning just to reserve a pool or beach chair in order to ‘relax’? There’s something amiss with resorts so badly run where this is the practice.