Sunbed wars see Brits forced to queue for 'over an hour' just to get to the pool

An engaged couple were forced to queue for over an hour with hotel guests rushing to grab the best spots by pool.

Laura Smith and her fiancé Eric Whittaker have labelled their holiday morning routine “chaotic” due to the so-called ‘sunbed wars’taking over. 30-year-old Laura revealed that guests armed with towels start queuing an hour before the pool opened at 9am.

Lines of over 100 holidaymakerswould stand around waiting for hotel workers to open up the pool. The couple, who got engaged last September, were staying at the five-star RIU Funana resort in Sal, Cape Verde.

The hotel, which costs upwards of £1,000 per person a week, implemented a one-hour bed reserve policy to help stop the chaos.This involved pool workers placing a ticket on an unoccupied sun lounger and coming back an hour later to remove the towel if it was still unused.

Have you been swept up in a sunbed battle? We'd love to hear your war stories. Email webtravel@reachplc.com

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The couple, from Coventry, were forced to take part in the morning rush in order to grab beds for their week long trip in the sun.

“The whole morning routine became both chaotic but comical,” Laura, told Luxury Travel Daily. “There were four entries to the pool and I’d say there were up to 40 people in each of those queues. People did run for the beds however most people opted for a quick walk to the area they wanted.

“Queuing started from 8am – as long as you were in the queue by 9am when it opened, you were normally OK to find a sunbed. The umbrellas are fixed so if you needed shade you’d want to be in the queue before 8:30am.

“The hotel would place a card on the bed and an hour later remove the towels. It wasn’t consistent though and beds could have been left a while before they had a ticket put on them. I think there should be enough sunbeds for how many guests are in the hotel.

“The hotel brought this in to stop the 5am bed reservers and was only put in place after I’d booked my holiday. If I had been staying for two weeks, I would have gotten really fed up with the mornings.”

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Now that the height of summer is upon us, the sunbed wars are well underway and raging.

Last week we reported on an incidentat the four-star Spring Bitacora hotel in Tenerife where Liam Pourhana and his friend, Paul Nygaard, had front-row seats to shocking scenes of sunbed chaos.

They witnessed a hotel worker almost get trampled by a ‘stampede’ of guests rushing to secure the best poolside sun beds. Footage showed the security guard unlocking the gate before dropping his keycard. He was almost knocked over by clambering holidaymakers as he tried to retrieve the card before retreating to safety.