500-euro bookings, raging crowds and guards at pools in Spain – Executive Digest

In Spain, tourism is enjoying a ‘golden year’, with bookings and demand at historic highs, thanks to the extreme heat that has affected the Iberian Peninsula and other parts of the Mediterranean, on the Costa del Sol and the Balearic Islands. However, the peak in demand has unintended consequences for operators and entrepreneurs: many do not have enough sunbeds.

In most hotels, the number of sunbeds available for guests to relax by the pool is not enough for the hotel’s maximum occupancy, so there are those who wait (and get frustrated) for a spot and seek different programs to ensure a good one. stabilization.

At the Paradise Park Hotel in the Canary Islands, every day crowds of guests race 20 meters, the distance that separates the pool entrance from the sunbeds, to get a much-coveted spot in the sun.

In the Canary Islands, two tourists kicked a woman, a mother with children, out of a restroom she had ‘stolen’ from them in a brawl, the Daily Mail reported.

To avoid this and other episodes of confusion, hotels in other Spanish regions have already begun to take special measures, some of them very creative.

The Sunset Beach Club Hotel, on the Costa do Sol, has a security system and a team of “sunbed controllers”, a sort of ‘inspector’ on the deck near the pool, who open the doors in the morning and control movement. in the chairs, but who check which ones are falsely occupied and go ahead and leave a piece or book.

False occupants of the chairs are first given a notice by the ‘controllers’ and after an hour, the items left behind are removed and the lounger is given to another guest. “There are people who jump into the pool early in the morning, leave their towels where they want them, and then go back to bed,” the hotel director explains to Euronews.

Whether abroad or in Portugal, many people’s holidays, especially in the Algarve, have this plan: early, early in the morning, go to the beach or the pool and reserve your spot.

In Spain, which is fighting against the practice, some are already trying to do business. In Ibiza, Alexia Parmigiani works as a sun lounger ‘guard’ at Queen of Clubs, a luxury concierge service.

The ‘Hold My Sunbed’ service involves negotiating the best spots with beach club owners, then reserving them and occupying them until the customer wants to show up.

To access the luxury service, you need to spend 500 euros per day. Alexia says that she has about 10 clients a day, but she never lies on the towels in the areas reserved for clients, so as not to wrinkle them.