Holiday pool lounger etiquette - who’s right?

[BlueyTuesdays]

Intrigued what people think on this one.

On holiday abroad somewhere hot and sunny last week. Hotel pool had (not enough) loungers, pool towels were available at the pool and given out as you arrive.

YANBU : if you are vacating your lounger for whatever reason - going for a swim, a walk, the loo, a very long lunch (another issue maybe) then you need to leave something on your lounger as well as the hotel pool towel that says it’s still in use. Your book, your own towel, a pair of sunglasses, your bag, your shoes next to the lounger. Anything.

YABU - leaving the hotel issue towel and nothing else is sufficient to keep your lounger held for your use whilst you’re away from it.

TL:DR I took a lounger (no others obviously available) that had only a hotel towel on it and 2 hours later a cross man turned up and demanded his lounger back - was IBU?

It’s very cheeky to ‘reserve’ a lounger then feck off for 2 hours. If they’re not back in ten minutes then I’d assume it was now available. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I hope you didn’t let the arsehole have the lounger back?

Hotel towel is sufficient to reserve but you can't reserve it for that long ffs.

Our place removes items after an hour

This is how it should be.

I voted YANBU but actually I think no lounger reserving should be allowed for more than 20/30 mins.

Reserving for hours on end with something that doesn’t even belong to you is extra unreasonable.

More hotels should be removing stuff that is just left there.

They should make people use those parking dials to show when they were last there!

last year went away un the hotel you could sit out near the pool for breakfast. right by the pool there was a nice row of loungers. we noticed 1st morning for breakfast the whole row covered in bright red Liverpool large towels and in person sitting there ( covered head to toe in black) no one else there at all for the next 2 hours we had our long breakfast. every day for the next 7 days was the same..the rest would join the line person till like 3 hours later. all day then one person would stay there "guarding" the beds. we thought it was hilarious 😂 it was a large hotel with loads of beds in good locations there was no need to reserve 😂 my husband and I thought it was hilarious to go through all that effort every morning so early on your holidays

You were unreasonable to take the lounger because it only had to towel on it. You wouldn't have been unreasonable if you'd took it because the man left it for two hours.

Lol @ the people who think you can't leave the lounger for more than 10 minutes. Do you sit there baking all day and not go in the pool?

I think being in the pool is the exception to the 10min rule.

2 hours is taking the p*ss. If you're going away for that long then give up the lounger.

I'd have hidden the towel and denied all knowledge of any towel being there and blamed it on someone else that must have taken it.

Do the 10 minute people monitor everybody's movements so they can tell which loungers the people in the pool are using?

Agreed, this is the correct etiquette.

Agree 5-10mims max

He was ridiculous. The reason none of his personal stuff was left there was because he was planning on being elsewhere for a significant period.

I've stayed at a couple of hotels where the pool staff move stuff off beds unattended for a long period and put them in a lost property pile. Quite right!

Both options are unreasonable, no-one should be hogging loungers. But if you want to nick one, move it to another location so no-one knows it was you!

I think the towel is the sign of reservation and I would expect people to appreciate that going for a swim, a walk, the loo, a very long lunch (another issue maybe) are the realities of being on holiday. However, morally I think if your lunch is really that long that you should allow someone else to lie there.

If he was away for 2 hours he's being ridiculous. The hotel staff could've collected abandoned towels for all he knows. Proper signs and rules are clearly needed. It is unfair to expect people to want a lounger and not be able to get one while someone reserves one for 2 hours. No way. How selfish.

I bet the hotel had a sign that you can't reserve sunbeds. Just say the lounger was free, pool staff must have removed the towels, look here's a sign

Well, I would use the lounger, but if someone then returned wet (having been in the pool) I'd then vacate.

We're not massive lounger users anyway

Interesting array of replies and voting split thank you! I did offer to move when the man came back to keep the peace as he was so annoyed but I did point out that every other lounger had a personal item left on it and a hotel towel alone wasn’t the best indicator. We ended things on friendly enough terms as he found another lounger (also had only towels left on it and the people had clearly departed entirely).

One of the hotels we went to would have the life guard put a card on the bed with a time dial on it. If you were not back within 30 mins of the time he put the card on he would remove your stuff and free up the lounger.

I don’t though do I, hence the question. I think I’m right but I don’t know it and I’m checking what others think, am open to alternatives and can see that whilst I thought I was being reasonable, the man may have been justified in some people’s eyes about thinking “his” lounger was still his. He was very cross but when I was reasonable and nice he calmed down, and he didn’t need to be so cross in the first place really …

Trying to understand this. So you go to the pool and every lounger is taken. You stand there scanning and after 10 minutes you pick a lounger to take?

No.

I would go to the pool area.

If all loungers supposedly occupied but many not, I would pick one without much on, wait by for a minute or 2, then move stuff to somewhere suitable, eg beside the lounger / table / wall. Then use the lounger.
If the owner returned within a suitable time I would move, if they didn't I would stay there.

I see absolutely no reason why I should not have a lounger because someone else has wandered off for 90 minutes. Most places I've been to say you can't reserve loungers anyway.

This. It's sad that it's needed but it is.

We went to a huge campsite in France this summer that had a large water park. At lunchtime, there was an announcement that said that if you had stuff on a lounger you had to return to it straight away. If you didn't, they picked up all your stuff and put it in a big pile by the lifeguards office.
Genius move.

Leaving your lounger for 11 minutes isn't "reserving" a lounger. It would be so rude to take a random one but I don't believe you do it anyway.