You’d think holidaymakers on the idyllic Canary Islands would be looking forward to unwinding from the hustle and bustle of their everyday lives and taking it easy over their hard-earned break. But a new video has revealed that tourists at a Tenerife hotel have been engaged in sunbed turf wars, waking up at the crack of dawn to reserve their loungers despite the pool area being under lock and key.
Father-of-two Matthew Vine, 46, said he saw people battling to secure sunbeds at 6.30am, while he was enjoying his morning coffee on his balcony in Puerto De Santiago.
The sunbed scrappers cleared paid little attention to the fact that the pool didn’t open for another three and a half hours.
The hotel had informed its guests that reserving sunbeds was prohibited, and yet footage revealed that some were going as far as dragging beds into prime position despite them being chained up.
A company director from Wetherby, West Yorkshire, Mr Vine was on a two-week break with his wife Sarah, 46, and two children Charlie, 11, and Holly, seven.
He captured the determined tourists descending on the pool area to secure their spot on June 2.
The businessman revealed that this wasn’t a one-off, but happened every day of their trip, despite the Globales Suneo Tamaimo Tropical hotel pool not opening until 10am.
Mr Vine couldn’t understand what the big rush was all about as the hotel wasn’t running short of sun loungers: “It was massive – there were two pools and plenty of sunbeds.
“When we went down around 9am there were still plenty of beds to go around.
“I took the video around 6.30am when people started to lay out their beds – which were still chained up at the time. I never did it, but I did enjoy laughing at them – why not just wait?
“I think they see one do it and panic sets in – suddenly they’re all doing it.”
A representative of the hotel said: “It is forbidden to reserve sunbeds in all our hotels, it is verbally indicated to guests when checking in, and in the sunbathing areas it is also indicated with signs.
“We are doing our best, including measures such as the one you can see in the video, chaining sunbeds so that people do not come to book sunbeds at unseemly hours despite the fact that we have enough sunbeds.
“This is not a problem unique to our hotel, but is repeated in many hotels.
“We are looking for solutions to this problem that do not cause even bigger problems, although all this would not be necessary if people took heed of our indications.”
