Well here’s a landmark court ruling that could have implications for the ways that tens of millions of Germans vacation (thanks to @istrakhov for flagging this)…
Continue reading: Judge Awards German Tourist Damages Over Hotel Pool “Towel Wars”
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Wish there was a list of resorts that enforce a time limit. 90 minutes unoccupied (60 too short as someone could be swimming that long).
I will never understand why people subject themselves to this sort of scenario. Holiday time should not be spent optimizing logistics for securing loungers.
Wild how the Europeans seem to find in-favor of consumers, occasionally, instead of just giving money to corporations and the ultra-rich, like we do in the USA. Huh. Wild.
The lasting solution is to restrict Europeans to two weeks of paid vacation like the Americans have!
He dynamic of hiking the tour operators liable for this is interesting. Without repercussions for the resorts themselves, will they chance anything? Will TOs sell away from properties known for this? Or just make a disclaimer to limit future liability?
Maybe there’s a tech fix. For example, RFID tags in towels and chairs that must be paired with a guest ID bracelet, or else - after 15-30 minutes - a device in the chair emits an annoying beep or message: “Diese Liege ist frei. Sie dürfen das Handtuch entfernen und die Liege benützen.”
Believe it or not, because of the Walmart wealth, Bentonville, AR, is no dump. Like, check out Crystal Bridges... seemed fairly 'civilized' to me.
If I actually were to visit that kind of resort, your unattended towel would be discarded of immediately.
I dare you to touch me. Swine.
I guess the theory is a tour operator (or group of them) has leverage over the hotels to get them to make changes. "Adjust your towel policy (and enforce it effectively) or we'll send our customers elsewhere." I don't know anything about German law so maybe a disclaimer would be good enough. But if not then we're back to the first option.
The operator makes a promise to the customer (Free loungers available) so of course he is liable in case the customer does not gets what it is promised
Yes and USA citizens abroad and in the USA always comply to sensible rules....
Have you ever been in FRA on a Tuesday morning when all the American kitchen sinks try to get on an innereuropean flight? The famous towel war is a Kindergarten compared to that.
Heck the owner of this side gives advice on how not to follow carry on rules and get away with it
And this explains why we have never been visited by aliens. They were in our vicinity and found no signs of intelligent life, so they kept going.
Any lounger reserved before breakfast time the towel should be removed at 9am. Record Number I have seen from a US based couple...4 reserved loungers/each, 1 in the morning in the morning, 1 in the shade am and vice versa at pm....
Pretty simple to solve...
When hotel thinks a seat is not being used, place a weighted hotel sign of some sort on it, informing the guest they have 30 minutes to simply place the sign on the table or ground. (write start time in erasable marker). After 30 minutes, scoop up the towels and place in the bin. Any personal items, place in a bag and move to a "claim area".
Sure some people would be upset at first, but easy to manage expectations and set the tone...
Karen: "I just went to lunch, what am I supposed to do, pack everything up?"
Hotel: "Yes"
Karen: "That is crazy!"
Hotel: "Sorry you disagree."
Karen: "I am going somewhere else next time."
Hotel: "We will allow you to check out today if you prefer."
After a few times, this goes away and is replaced by many more happy guests.
My original thought: this is awful and would make me crazy. Then I remembered our marina. The channel wait times run over an hour with the harbor master directing traffic. Yes we paid dearly and yearly for that privilege. I guess everyone encounters stuff that we accept as normal and should not. Glad to see the Germans were able to help. Mabey they should run a marina.
ADR, your lack of ‘respect’ for the subject behaviour is noted and appreciated by many of us too.
Iced cooler of Squirt sodas, family-sized bag of Corn Nuts, Motel 6 pool - congratulations, you've officially achieved peak poolside sophistication.
I just throw the towels in the towel bin and take the chair I want. F anyone who thinks they are going to hold a chair for 5 hours before they come out.
As a German working in hospitatly I am so embarrassed reading this. Between the Germans and the Brits its almost like a sport getting up at 6am and run to the pool to reserve a seat with a towel. The rule should be simple - only if you are there in person you should be allowed to put your towel down. Those resorts should enforce those rules.
The times I’ve visited mediterranean resorts using a British tour operator, the tour operator representatives at the hotel instructed us to remove towels from unused loungers so that we could use them.
Germans are actually significantly more litigious than US Americans. They also have access to insurance which covers comprehensive legal cover. 123/1000 people v 74 in the USA. Sweden is second.
Scheiße.
Paging Dr. Bose headphones.
I'm thinking of suing LH because they don't have enough exit row window seat.
If not enough by the pool loungers is a victory.
Then not enough exit row windows seat looks promising.
Looking for my €700000000000 class action settlement.
Imagine if the secret behind winning WW2 is,
Just bomb Nazi pool loungers.
Could have save millions of lives and billions of dollars.
Sadly, the Europeans are discovering why the US is such a litigious country. Nothing gets fixed until someone sues.
Seriously? Who swims for 60 minutes? Less than 1% I'd guess. Hell I think 30 minutes should be enough. Longer than that, you don't need a chair for that time. Get a different one later.
Presumably the Greek (possibly also Turkish/Arab/Spanish etc) guests can beat them by simply reserving the loungers at around 04:00-05:00 on their way back from the local bars/nightclubs!
The amount of tourists in Greece is becoming a real problem, I fear locals will start the “water pistol” tactics the Spanish are doing yearly now.
Have a reservation system like restaurants do. Put a 3 hour limit for chair use.
I don't find the concept of sitting on a sunbed by a pool pleasant to begin with, but if I wanted to, this is exactly what I'd do.
How about: "this is emblematic of why business in the EU is a problem. Why should a court be ruling on something so detailed and separately in the scope of contracts, to say that a hotel needs to provide chairs".
Because settling disputes is what courts are for? There can be a ruling on literally anything two parties disagree on.
Hilton Diagonal Mar in Barcelona handles this perfectly - when you enter the pool area, you get a (branded) towel and get seated on a lounger by the staff. When you leave the pool area, you return the towel (and pay any bill you may have). Simple, and it's impossible to occupy the sunbeds while not being by the pool. Every hotel should have this system and the problem would disappear.
I think @Miguel is right - the tour operator/seller probably has a fair bit of leverage in this case, particularly if they send a large quantity of guests or groups of guests to a resort. If you’re a property owner who starts losing out on 20-30 rooms a week that is a revenue loss that’s hard to ignore.
As usual, the most elegant solution is one of the simplest. The cost is labor and the benefit is happy guests.
I'm on a cruise right now and it's an issue on ships too. Every third chair has a sign on it that saving chairs is not allowed and if you're not using it, you can find your belongings over at the towel station. But I've never actually seen a crew member move anything.
I just sit/lay in a "taken" chair if it appears no one is there. Rarely has anyone come to claim it. Or just remove the towel, lay in the lounge chair & look baffled. They bend the rules with no hotel response ergo I bend the rules.
I thought lawsuits and court rulings are one of America's favorite pastimes?
So why hate on another way of doing them?
That's true.
Infinite supply of morons and entitled people is underrestimated.
Modern solution to an old problem, this could work.
Germans aren't known for tech-savviness though (married one).
Guess statistics was not a subject you excelled at in school. According to to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, only 55% of Americans get two weeks paid vacation annually.
I think it’s so silly how people will go on vacation to spend their entire time by the pool.
I'm with you. Sitting around a pool, lounging at a beach, none of those interest me at all. And, the silliness, to me, is paying 4 times as much to stay at place A over B when both have equivalent pools to huddle around if that's your primary activity. Of course, many would be bored following my travel patterns. To each their own.
It used to be only the Germans getting that tag, but the English were soon to catch up. The towel wars.
It is a challenge for hotels, which surely they could solve with some ingenuity.
We found hotels in the know, accomodate us coming in the afternoon.
The bug is actually a feature.
Hotels would have to require more from their staff and potentially more staff to police this vs serving drinks that generate revenue. That adds cost and/or takes away revenue. Since it isnt turning people away from the hotel, its not an issue.
Hotels typically sell reserved loungers and cabanas so the scarcity of pool chairs or the hoops you have to jump through make paying for these upsells more enticing.
In my experience at the few hotels I have been to that you have to play the pool chair game, you can slip a worker a $20-$50 and they will get you some chairs. Thats a revenue stream to pay for labor vs the hotel paying to police it.
If its not impacting guests coming to the hotels, why change or spend more for something that doesn't drive revenue???
Wild that liability can lie with the tour operator. I get there's no jurisdiction to sue a Greek resort in Germany, so the German tour operator is the only party available to sue....but we all know the fact of the matter is the tour operator is not much more than one of many booking channels for the hotel. The tour operator has no ability to control the hotel's sunbed policies, or probably anything else within the hotel's purview. Seems this would be a "buyer beware" situation. For a court to deem the hotel to be an agent of the tour operator is wild!
Good for the tourist, I guess. He got his pound of flesh from someone, though I question the additional amount of time, effort, and cost it took to get a mere 1k back.
Ben addressed this in the article: "Some might be surprised to see the tour operator be on the hook for the hotel’s issues, but that’s because Germany has strict laws about package holidays, and as a result, the hotel was viewed as an agent of the tour operator. So the judge ruled that the tour operator is on the hook to prevent such conflicts."