Once a year, usually when the sun starts beckoning me outside more, I find myself with the desire to do nothing but lay in the sun near a body of water. So I tap my like-minded friends and we book a trip.
Last year’s destination was Cancun, Mexico. As Texans, this meant a direct, two-hour flight and ample selection of all-inclusive resorts. The only daily decisions we’d make wouldn't have to be about restaurants or excursions — and the accompanying transportation logistics — we’d need to book, but instead were simply which poolside or seaside loungers we were going to post up at for the day.
Well, depending on the resort, the process of selecting a sun chair could be anything but simple.
Anyone who's taken a beach resort trip knows the daunting dilemma of lounge chair procurement. It frequently involves a member of the party volunteering as tribute to run down to the pool as early as possible to grab resort towels from the stand and spread them out in the most desirable section of the pool. Then, once the chairs are seemingly claimed, the volunteer meets the rest of the crew for a leisurely breakfast.
I want to be clear that this is not a practice I take part in, nor one that I would honor. A standard-issue resort towel would not stop me from claiming a chair — hey, thanks for allowing me to skip a trip to the towel stand! But I'm the opposite of conflict averse when moral misdemeanors are committed. While I might be deterred by people who also include their personal items to claim a chair they, nor anyone in their party is currently using, I will still fume in judgement as I walk by.
The first step of planning our 2025 girls' trip was finding a resort that had enough chairs for the entirety of the property — in hopes that we could avoid the early morning rush to find our homebase. This translated to me scouring the internet for property photos of resorts, comparing room count info on CoStar and searching reviews for complaints of chair savers.
Our research work was rewarded with a resort that had plenty of chairs available at any and all times of the day. For three days, we drank mimosas on the beach, flip-flopped from pool to on-site restaurants and booked midday spa services without worrying we wouldn't have loungers later in the day.
However, a German family on a vacation to Greece in 2024 wasn't as lucky.
According to a BBC article, the patriarch of the family sued a tour operator claiming that, despite his best efforts, he was never able to find chairs for his family because chairs were always already saved. The courts awarded the family a refund of €986.70 ($1,161.84).
Justice, in my opinion, was served.
Hogging pool chairs is tacky and completely insensitive to the rest of the guests, but ultimately the responsibility is absolutely on the resort to have enough chairs for its guests so as not to encourage a Hunger Games-like rush to the cornucopia of loungers each morning.
Additionally, the resorts should have a policy — and a way to enforce it — that outlaws hoarding pool and beach chairs. Marriott’s Maui Ocean Club, as the Wall Street Journal reported, employs a dutiful patroller to make sure guests are following the rule that a person can reserve only one additional seat and must be present to claim them.
Monetization is another route resorts are taking, including some Las Vegas properties, per the WSJ. While this is not the most holistic solution, offering guests a chance to reserve their chairs for a fee — or even a deposit — is acceptable, as long as the entire pool deck wouldn't become inaccessible to those not willing to front the additional fee.
In other words, if the resort features its gorgeous, four-pool complex and accompanying lounge chairs on its list of amenities, it should be accessible to any guest who books a room.
Hoteliers in general can broaden this view in order to think through the efficacy of the experiences they are offering their guests. Is every single guest able to access amenities as advertised? If not, how can you make it so? Everyone on-site paid to be at your hotel, so you shouldn't chalk it up to an "early bird gets the worm" learning experience. I fear that would not create a loyal, returning guest, now would it?
I'm sure this is a topic many have opinions on, so I'd love to connect on LinkedIn to discuss further.
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