sun lounger bagging etiquette

[hwjm1945]

Ok,I know this is trivial but......on hols,about 120 sunloungers,maybe 70 of which offer umbrella shade,.every morning as soon as pool opens parade of people with towels,books, bagging the prime loungers and then going off for breakfast etc,and not reappearing for in some cases 2 or 3 hours.
In one memorable case,a family group did not have Enough towels to bag the number of loungers required so used a pile of cut leaves!I do not think this is decent behaviour,I think if you are using area for lounging,pool etc save for popping t o loo Tec or to get drink then bag a spot.if not using it for hour or so you should remove your stuff to free up for others.what do people think?

There is often not enough loungers. i dont think it is unreasonable to be away from a lounger for a meal lasting a hour if we have already been using them. We like a late breakfast which is usually the time most people are coming down to the pool. We have already been there 3 hours and intend to spend the rest of the day there so why cant we eat without fear of losing our space to a later arrival?

Not many people come down at 11 oclock just to spend an hour they will then want the beds for the rest of the day so it is not likely we can find other beds.

But in that case you can understand people who won't be around until lunchtime 'booking' a sun lounger. They are just going along with the general view that a lounger 'belongs' to someone for the day and if they don't book one first thing they will have nowhere to sunbathe in the afternoon.
As I said, if people just came and went as and when they actually wanted to 'use' the lounger, there would surely be enough rotation throughout the day for everyone to get one for the odd couple of hours here and there. I mean, how many people just spend all day every day of their holiday sitting beside the hotel pool and doing absolutely nothing else whatsoever?

I'm an early riser too, so I put my towels down, have breakfast and go back to the pool within an hour.
But the number of times I've seen people book them who don't come down till after midday used to make me so cross.
And believe me, the Germans are now second in the league to the British, we are just as bad.
I remember there was a full family group of about 10 that stayed up till the entertainment stopped at about 3 am, then put their towels down and didn't come down till about 2pm.
This was in the Canaries
Another couple in Greece used to leave their kids at kids club and book the beds anyway, while they took the whole morning off doing water sports and stuff. They'd come back, go away for lunch and the loungers were used for a couple of hours max, especially as the kids never used them Mark Warner.
I now have a if you can't beat em join them policy.

We have had the same issues (on a cruise) and the rules were that you cannot save sunbeds for long periods of time, generally half hour. We made sure we got up about 8ish with the kids, there were 4 adults 2 dcs and we only ever took up 4 beds unless it was really quiet.

We didn't always really want to get up that early but it benefitted us all as it meant we could get a decent spot next to the pool for the kids. We would pop into the buffet and grab coffees and breakfast then sit outside with it but there would always be half the group still on the beds.

One or two of us may pop away at various times to grab lunch but we would never have left them for a long time as I think its just rude. We were actually there all day if we stayed on board as the kids were in the pool most of the day then when they went off doing their activities we could relax in the sun in peace.

There were actually enough sunbeds to go round but people still insisted on getting up at 530 to get sunbeds in the front row then appeared at midday. One day they already had their towells down when we arrived at 8am (they saved 4 beds) then got off at the port and returned at 2pm. We couldn't believe it. If it had been busy then we would have told someone TBH. We would never have saved a sunbed then got off the ship. It actually causes full on fist fights, I have seen it!

I agree with Arabeseque though, if people just used them when they needed to then that would work!

Not using at meal times is a bit different than paying a pool boy to reserve you the best spots which you wont use until 2 oclock.

Lots of people spend all day every day sitting by the pool. In fact a lot of resorts are designed to do just that being miles from anythng. One of my favorite hotels is in a bay about 40 minutes outside of hurghada. There is nothing there apart from beachside hotels and the whole idea of going there is to spend 2 weeks doing nothing. Luckily they do have enough loungers for everyone but to do so they patrol the beach and stop people from other hotels using the beach as it has the best reef in the bay.

Funnily enough the hotel is called Fort Arabesque. Do you take your name from it or is it just a coinsidence?

I agree with the view that people should just come and go, taking a sun lounger when they actually want to sit on it. People hogging sun loungers for an entire day create a situation where other people then start putting towels on beds early in the day as they know there will be none available later on when they've come back from an excursion or whatever and will want to relax by the pool and read for a couple of hours. It's a self perpetuating problem.

Its not really hogging them if you actually use them all day other than going a the grill to grab a burger though.

I know of lots of people who do actually sit by the pool all day, lots of people want to just relax on holiday surely.

Lovecat swim up private terrace where was this magical place?

Bed bagging is the wankiest of wanky holiday behaviour and what's worst is hotels say u shouldn't do it and there is no reinforcement of the rules!!

If a hotel is designed purely for sitting by the pool relaxing then obviously there should be enough loungers for everyone. A lot of the problem in those situations is people hogging the 'best' loungers for the full day, refusing to relinquish them and take pot luck when they come back after lunch or a stroll along the beach.

If a hotel is located where people come and go and use the loungers for a while here and there then if everyone just relaxed and stopped bagging sun beds for the entire day, the problem wouldn't exist in the first place.

I couldn't cope.

I couldn't go on a holiday with sun lounger anxiety stress involved. It wouldn't be a holiday.

I really hate the custom of lounger bagging. We've spent hours at the poolside with no lounger, glowering at the empty ones that have been 'reserved' but we never had the balls to remove the towels until one day last year when I decided that I would just remove them and if the people returned and made a fuss I would offer the lounger back to them. Not a perfect solution but at least we got to lie on them for a few hours.(They never did come back)

But how could you bear it mirry? Lying there tense and watching for a return? How is that a holiday?

I find resorts with a high percentage of British guests to be the worst for sun bed hogging. One of the best places I went to that solved this problem was a hotel in Croatia. You had to pay a very small amount for a lounger on the beach but it meant you could stroll down at 10 and still get a couple of loungers with an umbrella. It also seemed to stop people getting loads for their very young children that hardly ever sat on them. Last year in Majorca they had a funny system where the loungers were chained together in piles until 10 a.m and you had to hang aroung from about 9.45 waiting for them to be unchained whilst another member of your family hovered with all the stuff where you wanted the lounger to go. It meant at 10 all the men started running around with a pile of 3 or 4 loungers trying not to bash into each other... Very strange.

I was perfectly relaxed. Better than sitting on the ground.

I am with Everlong. The pool attendant is your friend.

I find lounging by the pool so boring. I like being in the pool or at the pool bar and then leaving.
I can't ever get comfortable in loungers either, would rather lie on the grass or sand.
What really annoyed me on our last holiday was the fact that the loungers were pulled right up to the edge of the pool so it was like a wall around the pool perimeter.
The loungers were almost touching so there was no gap to get into the toddler pool and I had to ask the people lying on them if they'd mind moving their feet or whatever so I could step over them.
Is that a competitive "get as close as you can to the pool" thing?
I don't get it.

I don't think it's unreasonable to get a sunbed when you're up and ready to sit on it, whether it be 8am or 10am. I also think it's fairly reasonable to have lunch or a drink at the pool bar, or even a walk along the beach and still expect your bed to be there when you come back.

What is unreasonable is getting up at the crack of dawn and saving beds, going off on excursions all day, never showing up etc etc

I only went on that sort of holiday once and I just found it too weird spending the day on one of a serried mass of loungers all occupied by foreigners being waited on by indigenous folk. And it was an AI, dear lord, the queues for odd cake at four so everyone got their money's worth.

That does not mean I am critical of other people who enjoy that sort of holiday, just that it isn't for me.

I agree with Hully sounds way too stressful. But I wouldn't want to lie around a communal pool within touching distance of a bajillion other semi naked oiled up people for a week.

yy, imagine what is in the pool - all that oil and bits of skin and wee and chemicals....

A film of Ambre Solaire on the top Hully.

What size tip does one have to give?

We were camping in France this year and had the sun lounger problem for the first time - I did wonder about an AIBU on it, but imagined lots of people saying I was BU, it's theirs, they bagged it, nothing to stop you getting up early, why should people who did be penalised just because you're lazy etc etc.

Essentially left and right-wing politics in microcosm! So this thread is refreshing.

Anyway, I love that sort of holiday - sounds of children and cicadas until late, playing cards at the table outside with the ineffectual citronella candle on, standing in the queue for pain chocolats in the shop in the morning and listening to all the different ways British people signal to the shopkeeper how many pains chocolat they want, even the tacky campsite shop sells Petit Marseillais...

I need a slap, I'm now mourning August...

Anyway. It's a poor show, bagging lots of loungers and then buggering off for hours. We only ever take 2 for the 4 of us anyway, on the basis that two will probably be swimming at any one time.

What's really annoying though is, usually if you look around there are actually about as many loungers as there are people at the pool anyway - lots of people swimming, many more more empty loungers. There would probably be enough for everyone at the moment they wanted one, if people didn't drape a towel over 4 and then bugger off to Super U!

But that's probably communism.