A British tourist excited to enjoy her well-deserved holiday at a luxury five-star hotel in Egypt had to resort to extreme measures to attempt to get a sunbed.
Setting an alarm at 6.30am, Mrs May, who runs the Tiktok account @themrsmay, rushed down to the pool area to grab herself a front-row seat.
“If you can’t beat them, join them,” she said.
However, to her shock, she arrived to find that almost every sunbed was reserved with beach towels and no one was using them.
“It’s 6.30 in the morning and already, look, most of these sunloungers have been taken and there is literally not one person here.”
“Absolutely no one here,” the Tiktoker continued, walking alongside the pool showing every bed with a towel laid across it, “just tying their towels to the sunloungers.”
“I actually think I’m too late already,” she said in despair. “Every single sunbed on that front row has been taken. We’re going to have to go on the back row.”
Mrs May shared her frustration about holidaymakers taking such a selfish action, saying: “Some hotels, they move them, they just get rid of them. I’m very tempted. Not to do it now, but when we come down and actually stay here for the day.”
It did not take long for tourists who have faced the same problem to share their own experiences in the comment section. One said: “I am that person who moves the towels when no one is there/ I don’t care. Put them on the floor and get on with my day.”
“No hotel should allow this,” wrote another. “They should be removing the towels. I refuse to stay anywhere that allows this selfish behaviour.”
Another revealed that a hotel they stayed at had come up with a clever system to stop the issue: “I went to a hotel that had a booking system. When you arrive you’d choose where to go and they’d be your loungers for your entire stay.”
One tourist even enjoys watching the scene play out when the holidaymakers finally arrive: “I always rip the towels off of the chairs and place them all on one chair. So there is like 20 towels on one chair.
“Then I sit back and watch. It’s so much fun.”
The so-called yearly sunbed wars already appears to be in motion this year. Last year, a couple who went on holiday to Portugal were so annoyed by the beds being taken that they decided to get up at 1am to reserve theirs.
Aimee, 20, said: “In the hotel we stayed at, if we didn’t get those certain sunbeds we would’ve had to pay €7.50 [£6] each for a bed.
“I know it’s crazy but it’s the normal thing to do here.”