Securing that sun-bed

This little special offer had me laughing out loud at its unintentional tongue in cheek genius - the German arm of holiday company Thomas Cook is offering a new service to German travelers that could spell the end of haggling over sun beds - holidaymakers at nine hotels across Turkey, Egypt and the Canary Islands can now book their sun-loungers in advance for a fee...

Heading down to the pool early in the morning in order to secure a sun-bed for the day? Well, you won't be the first. German holidaymakers are so practiced at the art that they reserve loungers with towels at the crack of dawn before heading back to bed or to breakfast. It's a practice that has been irritating the hell out of tourists from other countries for years, even though other nationalities can be just as unforgiving in the beach towel wars.

Now, one holiday company has had a brainwave and is offering a paid-for booking service for sun loungers in advance of the holiday, at nine hotels across Turkey, Egypt and the Canary Islands.

Reserving a lounger and beach umbrella in advance will cost about three euros (£2.60) a day, on top of the holiday package. For a weekly rate of 49 euros per room a family can reserve one lounger for each person, along with a beach umbrella and their own dining table at six Egyptian hotels.

Booking sun beds before you have even left home seems to rather defeat the relaxed holiday vibe and how are you going to know if you need one for certain days? If people are booking beds for every day of their holiday just in case and then not using them, this could mean others who haven't been offered this service are being left out in the cold, with no sun-bed to call their own, whilst empty beds languish in the sun.

But one of Thomas Cook's Managers, Peter Fankhauser, said that ‘with this we're relieving our clients of early morning stress.'

The service has already proved popular and may well be rolled out to other nations in the future. Currently, says Mathias Brandes, Head of Communications at Thomas Cook in Germany, it is available only to Germans.

Picture by alistairas