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The long-running holiday ritual known as the “sunbed wars” has now reached the courts.
A German tourist has won compensation after claiming he and his family were unable to use poolside loungers during a holiday in Greece, because other guests repeatedly reserved them with towels before sunrise.
The unidentified tourist won a payout of more than €900 following a trip to Greece with his family in 2024.
He claims he spent around 20 minutes a day hunting for sun loungers – despite getting up at 6 am to secure them – and that his children were forced to lie on the floor.
After the ordeal, the man sued his tour operator for allowing such a reservation system to remain in place, and argued that the sunbeds were, effectively, unusable because they were so frequently reserved.
The tour operator did pay out an initial refund of €350, but the courts decided he deserved a larger repayment.
At a district court in Hanover, judges ruled in his favour, saying the man’s family were entitled to a €986.70 refund for their package holiday, and calling it “defective”.
The anonymous man had paid €7,186 for the package holiday to the popular Greek island of Kos.
Speaking in court, he claimed that the tour company was aware of the resort’s ban on towel reserving, but didn’t enforce it.
The Hanover judges decided that, although the company didn’t run the resort, it should have made sure the property had a “reasonable” ratio of sun loungers to guests.
Sunbed wars go viral
Such “sunbed wars” are nothing new. The situation reached a peak in the summer of 2025, when viral social media videos showed holidaymakers in Tenerife opting to sleep on sun loungers to make sure they secured a poolside spot.
Another clip showed tourists sprinting around a pool at the Paradise Park Hotel in Tenerife to lay down towels on sun loungers and keep a spot in the sun.
In parts of Spain, tourists have been threatened with a €250 fine for hogging a sun lounger, and some tour companies have been forced to revisit their policies on sunbeds.