The great European “towel wars” have now escalated into actual litigation and a victory for a German tourist.
German Tourist Awarded Damages After Losing Hotel Pool “Towel Wars”
A German tourist has won nearly €1,000 in compensation after a court ruled that his Greek package holiday was effectively “defective” because he could never secure a poolside lounger for his family.
The man and his family reportedly woke up at 6:00 am each morning during their holiday on the Greek island of Kos, only to discover that guests had already “claimed” virtually every pool chair with towels. Even after spending 20 minutes each morning searching for seats, the family often failed to find enough loungers together and the children reportedly had to lie on the concrete.
The hotel itself apparently had rules against reserving loungers with towels, but nobody enforced them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch this:
A district court in Hanover ruled that the tour operator bore responsibility because it failed to ensure a “reasonable” ratio between guests and loungers and failed to enforce the hotel’s own anti-towel-reservation policies.
The tourist initially received a partial refund of roughly €350 (prior to the lawsuit), but the court increased that compensation to €986.70, arguing that the German tour operator misrepresented the package holiday by failing to provide what it promised: poolside chairs.
Pool Chair Hogging Is One Of The Worst Parts Of Resort Travel
Anyone who has stayed at a large resort in Europe knows exactly how this works:
- Guests wake up absurdly early
- Towels get clipped onto loungers before sunrise
- The same chairs then sit empty for hours
- Hotel staff pretend not to notice
It is obnoxious. And yes, Germans get stereotyped as the chief offenders here, though it’s not only Germans who do this.
The funniest, or perhaps most pathetic, part is that everybody at these sorts of resorts claims to hate the practice while simultaneously participating in it. Most resorts technically prohibit towel reservations, but few seem to actually enforce either.
Hotels hate confrontation and do not want angry guests screaming at staff beside the pool. So instead, they post signs threatening to remove towels and then never actually do it.
That creates the worst possible equilibrium:
- Rule followers lose (that’s big in Germany!)
- Aggressive guests win
- Everybody becomes more territorial
If hotels simply enforced their own policies consistently, most of this behavior would disappear.
I’m not sure I would have sued, but you would never catch me at a place like this in the first place and I absolutely understand the frustration. If you spend more than €7,000 on a family resort holiday and cannot reliably sit by the pool because other guests have transformed the area into a Darwinian towel battlefield before dawn, that adds a tremendous layer of stress to any holiday.
I truly don’t understand why anyone would want to stay in a resort like that. How is it vacation to stress over your pool chair…some have even “camped out” overnight to secure the best poolside chairs? That boggles my mind.
CONCLUSION
A German tourist has won nearly €1,000 after failing to secure pool chairs during a Greek holiday due to rampant towel reservations by other guests. The ruling is amusing on one level, but also understandable.
Hotels routinely advertise relaxing pool experiences while quietly allowing guests to turn pool decks into competitive early-morning combat zones. At some point, either enforce the rules or least remove them so guests have reasonable expectations of what to expect.
Hat Tip: One Mile At A Time
Same issue on many cruise lines. Particularly on sea days.
Am I the only one who ignores the towels and sits there anyway?
@Adam. Right!!! I sit there anyway.
I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t just remove some towels from some vacant loungers and use them. The sign says that you can’t reserve loungers, and if they come back while you are still using them – which I suspect is pretty unlikely – they can complain to the staff if they want. (Though in truth, I would never have knowingly booked a place like this anyway.)
Reserving a sunbed while I’m currently in the water is IMO perfectly fair and reasonable. Reserving it because I may want to enter the water some time later is not.
But seeing a towel on a bed, how can I tell? Maybe I’m punishing one of the honest people.
Easy. Most of the time, people that are going in for a dip will have other items on or near the chair. Sunglasses, a shirt, slippers, whatever. People that are just reserving the spot while they go back to sleep or go for a walk usually leave nothing but a spread out out hotel towel because they aren’t close enough to keep an eye on their things.
That’s the tell.
Non issue if you’re staying at a residence through VRBO or Airbnb…..
Watching the video, how unsafe to allow ” the running for the chairs” Stairs, concrete, children. How un-fun to suffer an injury for a pool chair!
The ” resort ” itself should be liable for this. If they cannot provide enough chairs at least have enough employees to stop a stampede.
I’m actually surprised a German court even heard this case. It seems too frivolous to even be heard in the US.
More like not frivolous enough!
Suddenly, this interesting article reminded me of a persistently eager activity from my first three years of medical school. If you had a dilligent group of students that arrived 30-40 minutes before the start of classes (8:30 AM) in a huge lecture hall with four hundred people, and secured seats by placing large notebooks for yourself and the other friends, you could get a chance to watch the lectures from the first 3-4 rows wihout any problem. This practice continued without complaint, just as it did for previous generations. But now it’s 2026, and I honestly have no idea if this legendary activity still continues among the first three-year students of the medical school I graduated from. To be honest, attending lectures from the front rows of a packed amphitheater with four hundred people was a significant deterrent for someone like me, whose attention easily wanders when sitting in the back rows, and who tends to fantasize about impossible air, rail, or sea journeys.
Hey Güntürk the Jërk – I’m getting real tired of your sophomoric rhetoric and unproductive drivel. Your shared opinions and experiences are about as real as most of the fake service dogs we see on airplanes and in airport lounges. With a nearly untarnished track record, I make it a point to take these canine fraudsters and their unscrupulous owners out of commission using whatever means possible.
Needless to say, you’d better start watching your back, Herr Üstün…
Now on to the practice of reserving sun loungers with towels and other inexpensive personal items. I assume unoccupied loungers are abandoned loungers and, therefore, free for the taking. I promptly remove the towels that the previous occupants lazily left behind and relocate any unattended personal items to the nearest garbage can. On frequent occasions, typically after 2-3 hours, a few dirtbag individuals will approach with fuming attitudes claiming that I took their chairs . After a short and heated debate, the gutter trash miscreants often back down and waddle off to some obscure corner of the pool or resort. On rare occasions, a confrontational verbal assault proves insufficient – in these scenarios, a little mace in the face or a knife in the back settles the score with minimal subsequent dispute.
Turkish. Not German
I hear this all the time, but I’ve never seen it myself anywhere I’ve been to.
When IHG and Iberostar had a rich promo in 2024 (something like half back in pts), I stayed at a couple of Iberostars in Mallorca, there were plenty of chairs. Well. Maybe not right by the pool, but within half a minute walk from it, there were plenty. I stayed at intercontinental Cancun last winter, which I imagine some Europeans come stay, it was the same situation as Iberostar. IC also had some paid beach beds, they didn’t seem heavily used.
I suspect this problem is only prevalent at ‘to good to be true ‘ cheap resorts for package tour crowds. People write reviews this century. If hotels don’t actively manage this, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
I have seen the reclinable chair squatting taking place at places that cost $300-$1500 per night. If it’s not just about any seat by the pool/beach, it’s about some wanting “the best” place by the pool/beach for some purpose or another in the (little) time they intend to use the chairs.
At some resorts, the pool/beach attendants will go around every hour or two and clear out places that sat unused for the duration of the time. If a place is unused for more than 100-120 minutes, seems fair for the hotel/resort attendants to free up the space for other guests.