I’ve never understood buying a plane ticket and paying for a resort – and then having to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning just to reserve a pool or beach chair in order to ‘relax’. That puts me out of step with many travelers who flock to resorts where this is the standard.
Just this. Its 7 AM and everything is “taken”.
byu/Krytykx2 inmildlyinfuriating
I do not see how this is an acceptable norm. It’s one thing when your stuff is on a chair and you go to the bathroom or to get a drink. “Saving chairs” with towels left for hours is not acceptable. If hotel staff won’t address it, vigilantism seems like an option – just remove all the towels from loungers.
Otherwise you get scenes like this one. At the Spring Hotel Bitacora in Tenerife here’s video of 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.
@chloeturner_1 Another day another sunbed war 😂 #holiday #tenerife #playadelasamericas #sunbeds ♬ original sound – Chloe Turner
In Tenerife, Spain I suppose this would be called “the running of the guests.”
But if you go on vacation somewhere that this is the norm (‘when in Rome’) you need to plot your strategy. If the hotel isn’t going to have prime spots for every guest, you need to look out for your family.
Here’s one dad making the rounds in social media again, trying to prepare for his family’s relaxation by the pool – by sprinting from lounge chair to lounge chair, putting a towel on it to mark territory.
He’s just one man. Vacation isn’t relaxing for him but he’s making darned sure his family can get what they’re after on their trip. He’s a modern family hero.
It’s been nearly 12 years since I first described a ‘resort factory’ and that was a Ritz-Carlton where you’d need to get up early and put a book on a beach chair if you didn’t want to be several rows back from the water. And the hotel was going for $1,000 a night in-season over a weekend even then.
So it isn’t easy to avoid. Maybe it’s better to save the money and just be that superhero dad. Not all heroes wear towels as capes.
True luxury is not being around other people.
Over priced hotels with idiot tourist doing this. Why go to a place with 1000 of others there. They are paying all that €€€ and they get a community pool area?
Go to some other beach, not a pool. That is NOT a holiday.
Go to the States get to Florida even where you can go to a real beach .
The show Benidorm is truly founded in reality.
If I ever find myself at a resort with guests doing this, I’m doing it wrong.
“Hero” teaching his kids to be selfish a**holes.
People do this everywhere. So I just move them and set myself up.
I just throw their crap under the palm trees. If the hotel isn’t going to do anything about the practice, then they will be just as complacent about ignoring the ritual. In fact, if they are hotel towels I don’t even move them, I just use them.
They are all welcome to call the police. Ha. If they want to pay my bar tab, they are welcome to the seats.
This is precisely why I keep a distance from Middle America.
I really don’t understand why you need a front row seat at a pool. There’s not even waves or a nice view. Once you stare past the pool, all you’re seeing are other guests anyways.
Every video I’ve ever seen of resorts where people put their towels on chairs all day are empty chairs with towels on it, except in the morning when the mad dash is. It’s like you’re reserving the possibility of using a beach chair.
Luckily I’ve never been to a hotel or resort like this, but I worry constantly I’ll end up at one without knowing it.
If there is not someone actually sitting in the pool or beach chair, then you can sit there. There is no such thing as saving. Yes, I did live in NYC.
I remember last Christmas staying at the Royalton Cancun. As a Marriott Titanium- trated like dirt here, I have a view on this. Hotels purposely reduce the availability of pool chairs so they can charge $$$ stupid amount for reserved areas and cabana areas at the resort. Lots of people fall for this and incremental revenue for guests.
Yes, I’m going to shell out big bucks at a resort I spend money to get to in order to sit at a pool all day long.
This world is doomed…
Similar low-class, middle America behavior on cruise ships. Some are getting more strict on stopping this practice. We sail on smaller luxury lines like Seabourn where the guest-to-lounger ratio is close to the guest / crew ratio, limiting this issue. When I experience it at resort or shipboard after watching for 30 minutes, I’ll remove all items and wait for the owners to return hours later to get my lecture.
Weird how all the anti America leftists here are using this as an excuse to bash all those non-coastal elites, but the example shown is Tenerif, which is full of Europeans, not Americans. You know, the authoritarian socialists you all want to be more like.
In addition, the rudest people on the planet are 1) mainland Chinese, and 2) entitled western leftists. Those middle America simpleton yokels would not be taking part in this nonsense. But you arrogant leftists wouldn’t know.
I’m on a Cunard ship right now. The rule here is any chair abandoned for 30 minutes – towel, book, whatever on it – has all the articles removed by one of the attendants and stored, and the chair made available for others. It is enforced and it works.