**Cardiff Holidaymakers Draw Parallels With ‘Hunger Games’ Amid Chaotic Sunbed Scramble in Spanish Resort**
A family from Cardiff has likened their recent holiday sunbed ordeal on the Costa del Sol to a real-life version of the ‘Hunger Games’, highlighting persistent frustrations facing British tourists abroad as competition for prime spots reaches fever pitch.
Leah Keenan, a 36-year-old health and safety business partner, recounted an experience that she and her family say encapsulates the increasingly fraught ‘sunbed wars’ at popular resorts. Travelling with her young son Albie, fellow family members Bev, Terry, Lowri, and her nephew Leo, Leah described their stay at the four-star Hotel Triton in Benalmádena – situated near the bustling seaside town of Torremolinos – as an ongoing battle for the elusive poolside loungers.
Holidaymakers paying £185 per night would expect a relaxing break, but the pool area was witness to an intense early-morning rush each day. According to Leah, guests began queuing from at least half an hour before the pool’s 10am opening, vying for the sunbeds with an intensity more reminiscent of a survival contest than a peaceful retreat.
“My family joked it genuinely felt like something out of the Hunger Games,” Leah explained, referencing the popular dystopian novel and film in which participants compete for survival. While their remarks were tongue-in-cheek, the Keenan family’s daily quest for somewhere comfortable to lounge became a recurring theme. Leah observed that some determined guests took the competition a step further, sneaking around the side of the pool or even jumping fences to get a head start on the sunbed dash.
The scarcity was apparent from the very first day. Arriving at the hotel’s pool around 11am, the Cardiff group was dismayed to discover there were no available sunbeds – not even one for a party of six. It wasn’t until nearly 2pm that they finally managed to secure a single lounger, which the family had to share among themselves. “It’s not quite what you expect when booking a four-star hotel,” Leah commented, expressing her surprise at the lengths some holidaymakers would go to reserve a spot.
Their frustrations were compounded by what they saw as a lack of intervention from hotel staff. Leah said she witnessed no lifeguards or employees monitoring the children’s pool or overseeing guest behaviour. The absence of monitoring, she argued, allowed many guests to circumvent the rules – reserving beds by tossing towels over fences and then disappearing for hours.
Leah noted that hotel staff did not appear to take action when sunbeds were left unattended, nor did they address more blatant queue-jumping. “There was no one keeping an eye, so people took advantage. It just became the resort’s daily ritual,” she said.
Despite the obstacles, Leah and her family tried to keep spirits up. The morning scramble for sunbeds gradually turned into an inside joke, helping them navigate the holiday with humour rather than frustration. “At the end of the day, we didn’t let it ruin our trip, but it definitely wasn’t what we anticipated,” Leah recounted.
Incidents like these have become emblematic of the summer holiday experiences faced by countless British tourists, raising wider questions about the adequacy of facilities and staff management at busy resort hotels. The practice of waking at dawn or devising elaborate strategies to reserve a simple sunbed appears to have become an unavoidable part of the package holiday experience for many.
WalesOnline reportedly reached out to Hotel Triton for a response to these issues, but no comment had been received at the time of publication. As British tourists continue to flock to sunny destinations, the debate over sunbed etiquette – and the need for better regulation – shows little sign of fading. For the Keenan family and others like them, these “sunbed games” will likely remain a memorable, if surreal, aspect of their European adventures.