Family who overslept on TUI holiday awarded £280 for missing out on sunbeds

08 January 2024 , 12:56

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Sunbed wars have been raging across holiday hotspots beloved by Brits for years (Image: Getty)

A family in Germany have won the annual sunbed wars by being awarded compensation after oversleeping saw them miss out on a lounger.

The unnamed family, from Saxony in eastern Germany, were awarded a ­partial refund on their €5,260 (£4529) Tui package holiday to a resort on the Greek island of Rhodes after they refused to wake up at the crack of dawn and place their towels on sun loungers. Sunbed wars have been raging across holiday hotspots beloved by Brits for years, as families find themselves scrapping for a top spot by the pool. Clips on TikTok have shown crowds of tourists racing to the pool area of hotels, some running to the sunbeds and plonking down their belongings, others flinging their towels onto the seats in front of them.

The German family argued in court that the scramble witnessed was against hotel policy, which said that no sunbed should be reserved for more than 30 minutes when not in use. They said staff at the Tui Kids Club Atlantica Mikri Poli resort had not enforced the rule. The family said on they would have breakfast and head to the pool around 9am most days, but found free loungers around the hotel’s six pools on only one day.

TUI Kids Club Atlantica Mikri Poli hotel in Rhodes where the incident happened

Their claim was contested by Tui, which argued that if they had broken the rules like all the other guests, they would have found poolside spots. But the district court in Hanover ruled that tour operators had a duty to intervene if guests used towels to reserve pool loungers they were not using. The Times reports the court said: "It is not up to the traveller to remedy the situation themselves by either removing other people’s towels on their own authority or reserving sun loungers contrary to the rules of conduct. This is unreasonable, as disputes with other hotel guests were to be feared, which no traveller should have to get involved in."

The family were given a refund of €322 (£277.37), just a fraction of the cost of their holiday but a huge satisfaction for the tyrannical practice that is taking over resorts across Europe.

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