Edward Lawton stood by the pool and watched grown adults sprint.
Not for a flight. For a lounger.
The 58-year-old from Wesham, Lancashire, filmed the scramble at the Globales Santa Lucia Hotel in Palma Nova, Mallorca, on 19 August.
READ MORE: 50 people queued from 8am for sunbeds at our hotel – one man fell over, it was absolute CARNAGE
His theory about the cause is short.
“There are 170 bedrooms and they’ve got 130 beds,” he told Creatorzine.
“Work that one out. It was absolute carnage again this morning. There are no beds available at all.”
Again. That word is doing a lot of work.
The 6am shift
Guests start gathering around dawn, roughly two hours before the pool area unlocks.
They bring bags. They bring flasks. Then they wait.
“As soon as the doors open at 8.00am, because they’re on a timer, everybody runs,” Edward said.
“It’s like a mad dash to grab the sunbeds. They’re throwing their belongings onto them, there’s pushing and shoving, and they’re just grabbing everything. It’s very, very competitive.”
By his count, every bed was claimed inside five minutes.
The man who refused to run
Edward, who is CEO and founder of his own company, says he never joined the queue. He watched.
“I was an observer from the sidelines because I was just laughing,” he said.
“People walk away with smug looks on their faces because they’ve managed to get one.”
The amusement stops at the hotel’s front desk.
“I thought the hotel should have a better policy on this because it’s absolutely crazy,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe that people are queuing up on their holidays from 6am in the morning, with their bags.
They’re standing there with pots of coffee around, as you’ll see in the videos, just to get a sunbed. Absolutely horrendous.”
Why It Matters
Sunbed footage is the most dependable content in the British summer.
It costs nothing to make, requires no following, and performs regardless of who filmed it.
A phone comes out at a pool in Palma Nova or Benidorm or Tenerife, thirty seconds of adults jogging in flip-flops gets uploaded, and the clip outruns anything the hotel’s own marketing budget has ever managed.
Creators have noticed. Holiday conflict travels further than holiday beauty, and a resort with a capacity problem is a content farm that pays nothing and can’t opt out.
The people in these videos didn’t consent to appearing in them either, which is a conversation the format has so far avoided having.
Spanish resort towns spent another summer arguing about how many visitors they can physically hold, with protests in Mallorca aimed squarely at the volume of arrivals.
A hotel selling more rooms than it can seat by the water is that argument in miniature, playing out at eight o’clock every morning.
Jam Press has approached Globales Santa Lucia Hotel for comment.
The queue forms again at six.
