Forbidden: Loungers reserved with towels at a pool. (symbol image)Image: www.imago-images.de
During their vacation in Greece, a German family couldn’t find a lounger by the pool for days because everyone was reserved with towels. The father sued the travel agency – and was now right.
May 12, 2026, 05:20May 12, 2026, 7:23 am
It’s one of the German clichés par excellence: When our northern neighbors start their well-deserved summer vacation in Spain, Italy or Greece, they march to the pool in the hotel before breakfast and mark “their” deck chair with a towel. This is the only way to safely indulge in the tanning process as the day progresses. Even if it’s just a short session and the deck chair remains empty for most of the day, but still reserved.
It therefore seems somewhat ironic that a German, of all people, has now filed a lawsuit against fellow tourists reserving deck chairs. But after his family vacation on the Greek island of Kos, 48-year-old David Eggert didn’t want to share what he had experienced there. Opposite the Picture-newspaper he tells about the towel row in the five-star hotel where he stayed with his family for twelve days. “It was a great hotel, very large, five stars, six different pools and around 400 loungers.” The family spent almost 7,200 euros on the supposed recreational trip.
But reserving deckchairs at the pool seems to be a phenomenon that occurs regardless of the hotel price range. So other travelers also secured their loungers early in the morning. The Eggert family had no chance in the relentless towel conflict. During her entire twelve days at the resort, she was unable to secure a lounge chair, not even for a few hours. Eggert: “We looked for a free lounger for half an hour every day.”
His children then simply lay down on the ground next to the pool with towels. What made Eggert’s outrage even worse was that, according to him, many of the chairs reserved with cloths remained empty, sometimes for hours. Complaints to the hotel and the travel agency had no effect. And remove the towels from hotel guests who stay away? Eggert on “Bild”:
«Two years ago in Mallorca I simply threw such a towel aside. Then a very angry Englishman appeared in front of me. But I don’t want to experience a situation like that on a family vacation.”
But the towel situation didn’t give the 48-year-old any peace after the holidays. He demanded compensation from the travel agency for the Tüchli stress. This offered him 350 euros, which Eggert refused. The fact that he ultimately went to court was due to the tour operator’s response: According to Eggert, the tour operator wrote to him that he should see the search for deck chairs at the pool during the holidays as “a kind of holiday challenge”. Whoever gets up earlier wins. The father of the family found the answer “insolent”. That’s why he filed a lawsuit.
Now there is at least a mini-happy ending for the Eggerts: the Hanover district court ruled in their favor. The travel agency must compensate the family for ten of the twelve days (arrival and departure days are excluded) with a 15 percent refund, totaling 986.70 euros.
(con)