More than 50 holidaymakers queued from 8am.
The doors opened at 9am. One man went down in the sprint that followed.
Kirsty Sarbutts watched a version of this every morning of her seven-night stay at the Ponient Dorada Palace in Salou, Spain.
READ MORE: I took my son, 7, to Corfu for 10 hours – our one night in the Lake District cost more than DOUBLE
The 38-year-old from Manchester, holidaying with her husband Hussain, 48, says the daily race for sunbeds tipped into something closer to farce.
“It was embarrassing to watch,” she told Creatorzine.
“There were fully grown adults stopping other people passing at the doors.
They were all running for sunbeds. One man fell over. It was absolute carnage.”
The child sent to the front
One morning, Kirsty says, a woman sent her child ahead through the doors to claim a specific bed.
Guests who had been standing in line for an hour objected, loudly.
“It caused other adults to intervene as they weren’t happy about queuing for an hour,” she said.
She and Hussain took the opposite approach and paid for it.
They ate breakfast at their own pace and arrived when they arrived.
Most of the week they spent on plastic chairs.
One sunbed. Seven nights. Late afternoon.
Towels on beds nobody used
The arguments did not end at 9am. Kirsty says rows ran through the day as guests started lifting towels off beds that had sat empty since the doors opened.
“Staff didn’t intervene at all,” she said.
“The only way to calm this situation would be the hotels allocating beds to rooms. It’s the only fair way around these situations.”
She will not be going back.
127,000 views and a comment section with opinions
Kirsty filmed the scramble on 26 July and posted the clip online.
It has since passed 127,000 views.
“They’ll race for sun beds but won’t come down to use them until 1pm, takes away from others who want to use them in the morning,” one commenter wrote.
Others were blunter. “The Brits are so bad for this now,” said one.
Another likened the scene to children let out at break time.
A third simply hoped the holiday never found them.
Ponient Dorada Palace declined to comment.
Why it matters
Sunbed footage has quietly become one of the most reliable summer formats going.
It costs nothing to shoot, needs no editing, and reaches people who would never watch a travel vlog.
A phone held at a resort door now does more damage to a hotel’s reputation than a page of one-star reviews, and it does it faster.
Creators working in the travel space have noticed.
So have hotels, which is presumably why so many of them decline to comment.
The complaint sits inside a wider argument about Spanish resorts, where overtourism protests, capacity rules and pressure on Brit-heavy destinations have been building for two summers straight.
Allocated poolside beds have been trialled at a handful of hotels, though rarely at this price point.
Kirsty’s fix is the one guests keep proposing and hotels keep not adopting.
Whether any resort tries it before next July is another matter.
READ MORE: I set my alarm for 6.30am to beat the Santorini crowds – there were already THOUSANDS of them
