Pay $750 A Night, Line Up At 6 AM—And Still Fight For A Pool Chair At This ‘Luxury’ Resort – View from the Wing

If there’s one thing I try to avoid when picking out a hotel for vacation it’s the ‘resort factory’ – the kind of large place where you have to get down to the beach or pool before 8 a.m. and place a book or other belongings out to have any hope of getting a chair.

The term for this first struck me years ago at the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman. It was supposed to be a nice property, commanding room rates over $1,000 a weekend night in peak season. But if you didn’t put out that book early, you’d wind up four rows back from the beach.

Apparently Hilton’s Grand Wailea is that sort of place as well. And they realize it. Their new solution – at a Waldorf-Astoria branded hotel, where you can easily pay $750 or more a night – is to charge extra for the beach chairs.

Newish beach chair policy to charge $150 for 2 beach chairs is just putting more pressure on the limited pool chairs. People start lining up for pool chairs at 6:00. They lower the rope at 7am and people start running.

Witnessed someone nearly being pushed into the pool over pool chairs. All chairs are taken by 7:02am. We went in the pool for 20 min and another guest had thrown our things on the ground and taken our chairs. …How is this a 5* resort?

There are free chairs. One guest describes the limited supply,

They have about 10 Tommy bahama beach chairs that are first come first serve (the kind that Costco sells). Those are the free chairs. They are also all gone right away. Regular beach chairs with an umbrella are now $150 per day (for 2 chairs with umbrella)

Credit: Grand Wailea

I’ve never understood buying a plane ticket and paying for a resort – and then having to get up at 6 o’clock in the morning just to reserve a pool or beach chair in order to ‘relax’. That puts me out of step with many travelers who flock to resorts where this is the standard.

Just this. Its 7 AM and everything is “taken”.
byu/Krytykx2 inmildlyinfuriating

And how did placing your belongings on a chair to reserve it, when you won’t be back for hours, even become a norm? It’s one thing when your stuff is on a chair and you go to the bathroom or to get a drink. “Saving chairs” for hours with towels or belongings is not acceptable. If hotel staff won’t address it, vigilantism seems like an option – just remove all the towels from loungers.

Otherwise you get scenes like this one. At the Spring Hotel Bitacora in Tenerife here’s video of guests literally lining up at 6:30 a.m. – waiting 90 minutes for the hotel’s pool gates to open at 8 a.m. – so they can storm this relaxation area like it’s Black Friday at Walmart in order to avoid missing out on a chair for the day.

@chloeturner_1 Another day another sunbed war 😂 #holiday #tenerife #playadelasamericas #sunbeds ♬ original sound – Chloe Turner

In Tenerife, Spain I suppose this would be called “the running of the guests.”

Here’s one dad making the rounds in social media again, trying to prepare for his family’s relaxation by the pool – by sprinting from lounge chair to lounge chair, putting a towel on it to mark territory.

If you’re like me, and this isn’t how you want to spend your vacation, research your spots carefully and avoid places where this is necessary – or acceptable.