The familiar towel on an empty sun lounger may look like a simple act of individual behaviour. In reality, it can influence the behaviour of everyone else around the pool.
When guests arrive at the pool, they are often influenced by what they see around them. They see which loungers appear occupied, what other guests are doing and whether the hotel actually applies its own rules. Those observations influence what seems normal and what appears necessary to secure a place.
What guests see can become the norm
Behavioural science distinguishes between what people are told they should do and what they observe other people actually doing.
The latter is often described as a "descriptive social norm". Behaviour observed in others can provide information about what is apparently normal or accepted in a particular environment.
Studies in hotel settings have shown that guests can be influenced by what they see or learn about the behaviour of other guests. The effect varies by situation, but the principle is relevant to the pool deck too: when a certain behaviour is clearly visible, other guests may be more likely to follow it.
Around a pool, rows of towels on otherwise empty loungers therefore communicate something without a single word being spoken: "apparently, this is how you secure a place here".
Why guests who dislike it may still join in
Another relevant behavioural concept is "conditional cooperation". Experimental research has shown that many people adjust their own behaviour in response to what they expect others to do. This mechanism helps explain a familiar reaction. A guest may dislike sun lounger reserving with a towel and still conclude:
At that point, reserving a lounger is no longer necessarily driven by preference. It becomes defensive behaviour.
How the towel race can reinforce itself
Guests see towels
Empty loungers with towels suggest that reserving early is normal.
Others follow
Guests who would rather not reserve begin doing it defensively.
The behaviour wins
If nothing happens, visible behaviour can become more persuasive than the written rule.
The race moves earlier
Once being early creates an advantage, guests have an incentive to arrive even earlier.
When the written rule loses to what guests see
This also helps explain why a sign stating that sun loungers may not be reserved does not always solve the problem.
Imagine that the sign says one thing while twenty empty loungers covered with towels appear to say something completely different. If those towels remain there for hours and nothing happens, guests may learn that the visible behaviour is tolerated.
The practical norm can then become different from the written rule. For hotel management, consistency therefore matters. Guests need to understand not only what the policy says, but also what actually determines whether a lounger is available.
Why the towel race can start earlier and earlier
Once reserving a sun lounger early creates an advantage, a further behavioural mechanism can emerge.
In economics and game theory, pre-emption describes situations in which acting before somebody else creates an advantage. Experimental research into pre-emption games has shown that competition can encourage people to act earlier when being first matters.
Applied to a pool deck, the logic is recognisable. If arriving at 8:00 a.m. reliably secures a preferred lounger, another guest may decide to arrive at 7:45. Once 7:45 becomes common, someone else has an incentive to arrive at 7:30.
Nobody needs to coordinate this behaviour. Every guest is simply responding to what they observe and to the perceived risk of being too late.
The collective result can nevertheless be undesirable: guests wake earlier, loungers remain empty for longer and the pool deck appears occupied before it is actually being used.
Breaking the loop means changing the conditions
This is why towel reserving should not simply be treated as a problem caused by inconsiderate guests.
If the environment rewards early towel placement, even reasonable guests can have an incentive to participate. Asking every individual guest to behave differently therefore addresses only part of the problem.
Another approach is to change the conditions that make the behaviour effective in the first place.
With PLOX, a towel or personal belonging alone does not determine whether a lounger is occupied. The status of the lounger is visible, occupancy is temporary and an unused lounger becomes available again after the period determined by the property.
This changes the behavioural environment. Guests no longer need to interpret towels, guess whether somebody is returning or compete simply to be the first person to leave belongings on a lounger.
The objective is not to judge guest behaviour. It is to remove the conditions that keep the towel race going.
What if the towel no longer determined whether a sunbed was occupied?
Discover how PLOX changes the conditions behind the towel race and creates a clearer, fairer pool deck for guests and staff.
Discover how PLOX works