German tourist wins refund over towel-reserved sun loungers in Kos hotel

A family holiday to Kos turned into a lesson in consumer rights when a German tourist won a refund after hotel staff failed to stop guests from reserving pool loungers with towels. The Hanover District Court found that the resort’s own anti-reservation rule was not enforced, leaving a paid-for amenity effectively out of reach.

The holidaymaker had booked a package tour to the Greek island in August 2024 for 7,186 euros and later sought back 986.70 euros of the travel price. He told the court that towels were being left on sunbeds as early as 6 a.m., even though the loungers were not actually in use. According to the case file, the man said he had to wake up at 6 a.m. and spend about 20 minutes every day searching for a lounger for his family of four.

That daily scramble had real consequences. The family’s children were sometimes forced to lie on the floor because no sunbeds were available, despite the hotel rules forbidding towel reservations. The court accepted that the tour operator had failed to confront guests who were reserving loungers and ruled in the traveler’s favor, treating the loss of access as a defect in the holiday itself.

The ruling reaches beyond one pool deck in Kos. It sits squarely inside the long-running sunbed wars, a recurring dispute in package tourism that exposes the gap between advertised amenities and what travelers can actually use once they arrive. A hotel can promise poolside comfort, but if enforcement is lax, the promise can become meaningless for families who have already paid in full.

The issue has surfaced before in European travel reporting. In 2018, Thomas Cook trialed advance poolside lounger bookings at three hotels in Spain, charging 25 euros per lounger in Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. Deutsche Welle reported at the time that customers would be emailed six days before departure and could choose a preferred spot on a pool plan, with 10 to 20 percent of a hotel’s sunbeds held back for guests who did not want to book in advance. The experiment showed how a nuisance once dismissed as vacation trivia had already become a commercial product.

The Kos judgment suggests courts may now be willing to treat persistent loss of advertised amenities as a travel defect, especially when a resort’s own rules are ignored. For package-holiday operators, that raises the stakes: if a sun lounger is part of the vacation sale, then failure to keep it available may no longer be just bad manners. It may be a refund.