Wandering down to the swimming pool on your all-inclusive, you’re itching for an ideal spot in the sun.
Except, when you get down there, every single sun lounger in sight is occupied with a towel – and yet not one holidaymaker is sitting on them.
The question of whether it’s socially acceptable to reserve a bed is a classic holiday debate. We’re not talking leaving your belongings while you pop to the bar for a swift drink either, but getting up at the crack of dawn and abandoning ship for hours on end.
So, just who is guilty of this divisive holiday habit? A new study has revealed the UK regions most likely to snap up sunbeds early.
The West Midlands took the crown, with 15% of locals admitting to waking up early to reserve a lounger.
Things aren’t much better in Wales, North East England, the North West or Northern Ireland, where 13% fessed up to this controversial practice, while the East of England, London, and South East England were all level at 12%.
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The good people of the East Midlands were much better behaved than their neighbours, coming in at 10%, as did bonnie Scotland.
The least guilty? It’s a tie between Yorkshire and the Humber and South West England, where just 8% of holidaymakers owned up to being a sunbed hogger, according to GetYourGuide.
The good news is that while this behaviour is undoubtedly irksome for those of us who want a fair chance at securing a spot, it’s becoming less common. One in 10 might’ve admitted to it this time around, but it’s at least decreased from the whopping 72% five years ago.
Metro previously declared the beginning of 2025’s sunbed wars back in May, after an altercation at a resort in Lanzarote came with the battle cry ‘you picked on the wrong person.’ There were even threats of getting the manager involved.
The spat at the Hyde Park Lane hotel was caught on camera by Callum Lines, 31, after a Scottish woman marched over to a woman on a sunbed declaring that she had taken her spot. The resort has an explicit policy of banning guests from reserving loungers.
The notorious act of reserving a sunbed on holiday has long been hotly debated, so much so that in 2024, drones were even deployed across ‘beach-hogging’ hotspots in Greece.
Here, members of the public can use an app to report people placing towels down in restricted areas – with the Greek government declaring that it issued approximately €350,000 (£302,967) in fines in a mere five-day period.
And, in the view of etiquette expert William Hanson, there’s a specific time limit on how long you can leave your belongings before it becomes rude.
‘Reserving sun loungers with a towel for longer than 30 minutes is a big no-no, [and] beyond that grace period it’s first come, first served,’ he previously told Mirror Online.
Over on the r/AskUK Subreddit, @bonomini6 previously revealed that they couldn’t secure a sunbed when arriving at the pool at 10am, as people had ‘come down at stupid o’clock, left their towels there and then disappeared all day.’
‘Why do you do this? Don’t you realise that if you didn’t, we could all relax a bit more as the sun beds would be available when we actually wanted to use them,’ they added, going as far as to suggest that if zero beds were available, it might be acceptable to ‘remove towels.’
They weren’t alone, as @saitins confessed that in this situation, they ‘scope out for a prospective spot for 10 or so minutes, and if no one returns, the towels get chucked.’
Meanwhile, @evilsquits reflected on their experiences holidaying in Majorca, when they rented one static parasol and two sunbeds.
‘The woman behind us didn’t want a parasol and only rented a bed and then started moving it around ours to get in the shade after a few hours,’ they penned, adding that the staff ended up telling her off and ‘dragging her out of the vicinity of us.’
‘I quite like folding them neatly and leaving them by the bar so it looks like the staff did it,’ @EarlyGoose9284 added, while @WellFiredRoll described the act as straight up ‘pathetic.’
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