German who lost race to “reserve” sun lounger wins €900 in damages

A German man has received a 900-euro payout in damages after his holiday in Greece was ruined by other tourists constantly hogging the sun loungers.

German man denied a sun lounger on holiday

The only thing more German than placing your towel over an empty sun lounger to “reserve” and hog it is devoting two years of your life to taking legal action because other people hogged the sun lounger, so you couldn’t use it.

This was the lived experience of one man who paid 7.186 euros to take his family on a package holiday to Kos, Greece. During the holiday, the man would wake at 6am and scan the resort with bleary-eyed urgency for 20 minutes, but he was never able to find a free sun lounger because fellow guests had already “reserved” them with their towels.

The man took it up with the package holiday tour operator, but found his efforts to enforce equal access to sun loungers lacking. In court, he argued that the tour operator had not sufficiently challenged the other guests' selfishness or enforced the ban on “reserving” sun loungers. The man argued that as a result, his children were forced to lounge on the ground.

Hanover court rules holiday “defective”

While the tour operator gave the man a 350-euro refund for his troubles, the court in Hanover ruled that he was owed more for his “defective” holiday. He has now been awarded a damages payment of 986,70 euros.

The court understood that the tour operator did not run the hotel and could not ensure all guests had fair access to a lounger, but that the operator did have responsibility to guarantee “reasonable” access to a lounger.