Hotel sunbeds: from the towel war to the room charge
You head down to the pool at eleven, book and sunscreen in hand, and there isn't a single free sunbed. Not one. They're all taken… by towels. A folded T-shirt here, a pair of flip-flops there, a sarong over the best front-row lounger, claimed since seven in the morning by someone who's right now having a leisurely breakfast at the buffet. You do a lap, give up, and end up on a plastic chair far from the water. First morning of the holiday.
That scene plays out every summer in thousands of hotels, and the one who loses out isn't just the guest left without a spot: it's you. Because those front-row sunbeds and Balinese daybeds you set up to be something special aren't being enjoyed by whoever values them most, and they aren't earning you a cent: you hand them out on a first-towel-first-served basis. And meanwhile, the front desk takes the complaint. Fixing this isn't about putting up a "no reserving with towels" sign; it's about giving every guest an easy way to actually book, and giving you control over what happens at your pool.
Your guest books from the lounger, in their own language
The first piece is taking the dawn race out of the equation. Your guest books their sunbed from their phone —the night before from the room, or that same morning without getting out of bed— and picks a zone, a time slot, and a spot. No trip to the front desk, no early alarm, no fighting for it. And they do it in their own language: the booking form shows in six languages and detects the one on their phone, which in a hotel full of guests from all over the world is no small thing.
What disappears is the towel system, with everything it drags along: the pointless early mornings, the arguments between loungers, and the lottery feeling. The reserved spot is genuinely theirs, and they arrive knowing it's waiting for them. You also decide whether to open bookings only to your guests or to outside customers willing to pay for your pool too.
The charge goes to the room, not to a separate till
Here's what a beach bar can't do and your hotel can. Your guest is already staying with you: they have an open account. So booking a sunbed doesn't have to be a card transaction poolside. If your hotel works with a PMS, the system connects to it and the sunbed charge goes straight to the room folio. The guest doesn't pull out a card: they pay for it all together at check-out, along with the rest of their extras. It's an integration set up with you, tailored to whatever PMS you already use.
And if you don't use a PMS or prefer something simpler, there's pay-on-arrival —charged by the front desk or the pool staff in person— or you can include the sunbed as a courtesy for your guests. In every case, two headaches disappear: the pool's separate till closing and the loose cash floating around. Every sunbed ends up recorded where it should be.
Your pool and your beach aren't the same thing
A hotel rarely has just one sunbed area. There's the main pool, maybe a kids' pool, access to the beach concession, and that Balinese-daybed corner that adds a bit of prestige. Each one has its own crowd, its own hours, and its own price, and treating them as a single block leaves both money and order on the table.
It's a subject with enough to it that it deserves its own piece, but the underlying idea for a hotel is simple: the front-row daybed can cost what it's worth, the inner-pool lounger something else, and the sun-deck one something different again. Differentiating zones is exactly what turns "free sunbeds for everyone, first come first served" into an orderly source of income.
The front desk sees occupancy and income
With bookings in order, the front desk stops managing by guesswork. At any moment it sees how many sunbeds are left in each zone, who has booked, and how much is coming in, by zone and by day. And the guest who books and never shows up stops being a black hole: that spot can be released and offered to someone else instead of sitting empty all morning.
That information isn't just operational, it's about the business. Knowing which zones fill up, at what times, and how much each one earns is what tells you whether you're short a row of daybeds, whether the kids' pool can handle one more afternoon slot, or whether your front row is underpriced. Decisions you make on gut feeling today start leaning on what's really happening at your pool.
From giving away the best spot to making it pay
A hotel's pool and beach don't have to be no-man's-land or an extra you end up giving away without meaning to. With bookings in order, both sides win: the guest gets a better experience —their sunbed is waiting, no early alarms and no friction— and you take back control of an asset that until now was handed out by luck and a towel.
See how it fits your hotel and which plan works for you. In the end, every front-row sunbed that wakes up taken by an empty towel is money —and a complaint at the front desk— waiting for you to bring some order.
