I’m an etiquette expert and here’s how long you can reserve sun loungers at a hotel before you are officially rude
THE battle for hotel sun loungers is a well documented scrap and has been happening for years.
Every summer, footage emerges of guests fighting it out over who can lay their towel down early in the morning, to get the best spot by the pool for the day.
However, there are some unwritten social rules about whether or not you can reserve a sunbed.
Etiquette expert William Hanson reveals how long you should wait before it's okay to remove someone's towel from a lounger.
He told the Mirror: "Reserving sun loungers with a towel for longer than 30 minutes is a big no-no, beyond that grace period it’s first come first served."
However, there are some caveats to that 30 minute grace period.
Read More on Sunbed Wars
For instance, if someone is actually using the pool, then the lounger is still theirs to use.
One holidaymaker recently tried to shame sunbed hoggers by filming them laying out towels at a hotel first thing in the morning.
The footage showed how almost every bed in the resort has been covered with a towel, as eager sunbathers marked their territory before the pool becomes too busy.
The video, shared on Tiktok by user Daxi sparked debate about which nations are the worst offenders when it comes to sunbed hogging.
Most read in News Travel
A German commenter wrote: "I’m German and live in the U.K. On my last holiday to Greece it was the English that had the towels out before 6 am."
Some hotels have their own ways of dealing with it, like throwing towels off the beds if no one uses them for a certain amount of time.
Others have forced tourists to pre-book the beds, to prevent people from reserving them with towels, despite not wanting to use them until later.
It is also always worth checking to see if the hotel has its own individual policy on reserving sun loungers.
Read More on The Sun
Holidaymakers have even taken to reserving spots on the ground at some resorts.
Rcently, some hotel guests were filmed queueing up to be the first to put their towels down in Tenerife.
