{"id":576979,"date":"2026-05-10T20:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T20:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/576979\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T20:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T20:49:09","slug":"how-hotels-are-stopping-the-dawn-dash-for-sunbeds-after-man-wins-payout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/576979\/","title":{"rendered":"How hotels are stopping the ‘dawn dash’ for sunbeds after man wins payout"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man had initially paid \u20ac7,186 (\u00a36,211) to take his wife and their two children on the package holiday to Kos, an island in Greece.<\/p>\n

In his arguments to court, he said his tour operator had failed to enforce the resort’s ban on towel reservations.<\/p>\n

He said loungers were unavailable even at 6am, and his children were forced to lie on the floor.<\/p>\n

Though the tour operator had initially given him a refund of \u20ac350 (\u00a3302), judges in Hanover ruled<\/a> the family was entitled to a refund of \u20ac986.70 (\u00a3852.89).<\/p>\n

The judges acknowledged the travel company did not run the hotel and could not ensure every customer could access a sunbed at any given time. <\/p>\n

But they said the operator did have an obligation to ensure there was an organisational structure to guarantee a “reasonable” ratio of sunbeds to guests.<\/p>\n

The man, who the Daily Mail identified as David Eggert, a 48-year-old father of two and pilot from Dusseldorf, said in an interview on Sunday: “It was a big hotel, very fancy, with about 400 loungers.<\/p>\n

“And all 400 loungers had towels on them.<\/p>\n

“The people were not actually using the loungers, and the guests went into town or went back to bed and slept.”<\/p>\n

He said he believes it is a “very, very important ruling”.<\/p>\n

“When the holiday season starts in June and July and people face the same problem, they will say: ‘Look, somebody sued a tour operator over this. I’ll do the same’,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If thousands of holidaymakers start suing travel companies, the costs will run into the millions,” he added.<\/p>\n

Since the ruling went public earlier this week, other holidaymakers have told the BBC they have encountered similar issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man had initially paid \u20ac7,186 (\u00a36,211) to take his wife and their two children on the package…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-576979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}