Latest news with #sunbed
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
"Spanish sunbed dash was so competitive I couldn't get a lounger for a week"
A British tourist says the sunbed dash at her Spanish hotel was so competitive she didn't use a lounger for her entire week-long holiday. Adele Gough, 35, watched in disbelief as guests massed by the pool gates at 9am before charging forward and hurling towels on sunbeds. She captured the chaotic scenes at the four-star GHT Oasis Park Hotel in Lloret de Mar, Spain, on camera last week (July 31). Adele, a hotel cleaner from Great Shefford, Berks., found it so "selfish" she refused to join in - and didn't get to use a lounger for her entire holiday. She said: "At first I found it all pretty funny and typical of holiday-goers. It was entertaining to watch. "But I do think it's a bit selfish, as most of the sunbeds just sat there with a towel on them all day." Adele, who was celebrating her birthday on the trip, said there weren't any clear rules about reserving sunbeds, which she believes led to the panicked rush each morning. Not wanting to spend her mornings queuing and running, Adele chose to skip the sunbed scramble entirely. She said: "There weren't any signs or rules posted anywhere around the hotel so all people could do was wait until the lifeguards opened the gates and then rush in. "I decided not to bother so I didn't end up using the sunbeds at all this holiday."
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Daily Mail
It's the sunbed Olympics! Holidaymakers make a mad dash to outrun fellow guests to reserve prime loungers at Spanish resorts
This is the moment holidaymakers in Spain make a mad dash to reserve prime sunbed spots at resorts, while attempting to outrun fellow guests. One tourist in Tenerife is seen sprinting to the poolside and throwing towels on seven loungers, while others in Lloret de Mar try to beat competition in the 'morning races'. Click above to watch the video in full.
The Sun
4 days ago
- The Sun
I stayed at a hotel in Spain where the sunlounger dash was so competitive I couldn't get one for a WEEK
A BRIT has revealed how during her week-long holiday in Spain, she was never able to get a sunbed thanks to competitive morning dashes. When recently on holiday in Spain, Adele Gough watched masses of guests gather around the pool gates before 9am. 4 Win one of 8 incredible holidays to the Caribbean, Mexico and Greece by voting in The Sun's Travel Awards - enter to win here As soon as the gates then opened, the crowds of tourists would charge forward and hurl their towels onto sunbeds. The 35-year-old captured the scenes at the four-star GHT Oasis Park Hotel in Lloret de Mar, Spain via video. The hotel cleaner from Great Shefford shared that she thought it was "selfish" and consequently, refused to join the sunbed gate lurkers. However, this meant the Brit didn't get to use a lounger for her entire holiday. She said: "At first I found it all pretty funny and typical of holiday-goers. "It was entertaining to watch. "But I do think it's a bit selfish, as most of the sunbeds just sat there with a towel on them all day." Adele was on holiday celebrating her birthday when she discovered the morning crowds for sunbeds. She explained how the hotel did not have any clear rules about reserving sunbeds, which she believes caused the panicked rush each morning. Inside the Spanish town begging for Brit tourists Not wanting to stress with the crowds or queues, Adele chose to skip each morning frenzy. She added: "There weren't any signs or rules posted anywhere around the hotel so all people could do was wait until the lifeguards opened the gates and then rush in. "I decided not to bother so I didn't end up using the sunbeds at all this holiday." Frantic dashes for sunbeds is not uncommon in Europe, with many other travellers taking to social media with videos of holidaymakers rushing to secure a lounger via any means possible. In June, a man from Ireland shared a video of sunseekers wearing sprint shoes in an attempt to get the first dibs on sunloungers. 4 Aaron Turner and his fiance Shauna Wall were in Spain with their four-year-old daughter when they spotted the bizarre scenes. Aaron said: "The queues would get pretty long. "Once the barriers opened, all the rules went - people were jumping the queue, and some were properly running." He added that there were "definitely enough beds" - though this didn't stop holidaymakers from doing everything they could to be the first to get to the sunbeds. "I thought it was hilarious, I've seen videos of it online before but it was the first time I experienced it myself," he said. "We got a good laugh out of it." Everything you need to know about visiting Spain Brits must have at least three months left on their passport from the day they plan to leave the country. Tourists do not need a visa if visiting for up to 90 days in an 180-day period. Make sure your passport is stamped on entry and exit. Travellers may be asked to show hotel booking confirmations and that they have enough money for their stay at the border. Spain is one hour ahead of the UK. The country uses the euro with around €10 working out to £8.55. Flights to Spain from the UK take between 2-4 hours depending on the destination. In July, a British couple were also left fuming after they received a sunlounger warning on holiday – despite other hoggers being ignored. Plus, Majorca has removed sunbeds and parasols from its top beaches.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Burn notice: Gen Z and the terrifying rise of extreme tanning
Hannah Clark got her first spray tan for her school prom and has never looked back. 'I'm not proud of it, but I have used sunbeds,' says the 29-year-old graphic designer from Plymouth. Her goal is 'that glow you get when coming back from holiday. You know, when you walk around and people say: 'Oh, you look really healthy.' It's that feeling I'm chasing.' Clark is far from alone. On TikTok and Instagram, posts with the hashtag 'sunbed' number more than 500,000. Last year, a survey from skin cancer charity Melanoma Focus found that 28% of UK adults use sunbeds, but this rose to 43% among those aged 18 to 25. This new generation of younger tanning obsessives will go to extreme lengths to darken their skin. Some track the UV index – the level of the sun's ultraviolet radiation – and deliberately sit in the sun at the most dangerous times of day. Others use unregulated nasal tanning sprays and injections, which rely on a chemical to darken the skin. All the people under 30 I spoke to for this article know how dangerous tanning is. NHS guidance states that there is no safe or healthy way to get a tan and advises keeping out of the sun between 11am and 3pm, wearing sunscreen of at least factor 30, and covering up with clothing, hats and sunglasses. Dr Zoe Venables, a consultant dermatologist at Norfolk and Norwich University hospitals, with an interest in skin cancer epidemiology, says that when skin turns darker after UV exposure it 'suggests you're damaging those cells in your skin'. Sunbeds are categorised by the World Health Organization (WHO) as 'dangerous' – with their cosmetic use increasing incidences of skin cancers and driving down the age at which skin cancer first appears. It says people who have used a sunbed at least once at any point in their lives have a 20% greater chance of developing melanoma – the deadliest of the three most common forms of skin cancer – than someone who hasn't. For someone who has used a tanning bed for the first time before the age of 35, there is a 59% greater chance of developing melanoma. Despite this stark reality, having a tan is still presented to many young people as aspirational – whether it's faux tan-lines appearing on catwalks or bronzed influencers on holidays in Dubai. Many sunbed shop owners sell tanning as a form of 'self-care', while influencers post 'come for a sunbed with me' videos. Perhaps most perniciously, some sunbed shops even make light of the known risk associated with them. One meme shared on Instagram by a tanning salon overlays the text: 'When someone tells you sunbeds are bad for you' with a clip from the sitcom Benidorm, in which the character Madge Harvey says: 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with AB: absolute bollocks.' Emily Harris, 23, from Leeds, uses sunbeds. Her parents both work for the NHS and have warned her about the risks. But she says that having spent most of her teenage years in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by various global conflicts and the ever-looming presence of climate breakdown, the dangers of a sunbed seem small by comparison. 'You can die of anything – do you know what I mean?' she says. While Harris, who works in sales, can't afford to use sunbeds all the time, she uses them whenever she has 'a bit of spare money', making use of the deals that salons offer. Before a recent holiday, she bought a package that gave her unlimited minutes, with a daily limit, for four weeks. 'I was going every day,' Harris says, which she admits 'is a bit silly', but adds: 'I was trying to make the most of the package.' As well as using tanning beds, Harris is 'obsessed with tracking the UV', and has the index on the lock-screen of her phone. She and her colleagues plan their breaks around times when the UV index is highest, so they can maximise their exposure to the dangerous radiation. A number of her friends also use nasal tanning sprays, which were the subject of a Trading Standards warning issued earlier this year that stated: 'These products can cause nausea, vomiting, high blood pressure, and even changes in mole shape and size … studies have shown a potential link to melanoma, a type of skin cancer.' Harris tried one when her friend had a spare bottle, but 'didn't see a result' so hasn't used one again. Was she worried about what might have been in it? 'To be honest, not really. I know it's bad, but at the time, I was more bothered about getting a tan.' Nasals, as they are known, usually contain a lab-made substance called melanotan II, a chemical that darkens skin pigmentation. Though it is illegal to sell medicinal products containing melanotan II in the UK, cosmetic products fall outside that remit and are easily available on social media. Dr Suraj Kukadia, a GP known to his 282,000 TikTok followers as 'Doctor Sooj', is concerned about the popularity of nasal sprays. He says melanotan II can also lead to 'painful and sustained erections in men, kidney damage, acne and muscle-wasting'. Holly Feldman, 25, lives in Surrey and is the CEO of a swimwear boutique. She has more than 10,000 followers on Instagram and is often sent free tanning products such as nasal sprays and injections. 'I think that was why it was so addictive for me,' she says. Though she had no idea what was in these products, and the injections in particular made her feel unwell, she says: 'I was just trying to turn a blind eye to it because I was so obsessed with how it made me look.' Feldman recently appeared on former Love Island contestant Olivia Attwood's ITV documentary series The Price of Perfection, in which Attwood explores the risks of various cosmetic treatments. Being on the show made Feldman realise how much potential damage she could be doing. She hasn't used a tanning injection for four months, and has reduced her use of a nasal spray to a couple of times over the past month, when previously it would have been four inhalations a day. 'I do still use sunbeds,' she says. 'But I have cut down. There was a time when I was going on them four, five, six times a week and now I only go on them once or twice.' Data from the UK and Ireland's Sunbed Association suggests that tanning beds are most popular among 25- to 45-year-olds, and more women than men use them. But that's not to say gen Z men are free from the pressure to sport a tan. Craig Hopkins, a 29-year-old dance teacher based in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, says he uses sunbeds to 'look like I've just come back from holiday'. He prefers the look of a 'real' tan to a fake tan, which ties in to existing social media trends such as 'looking expensive' and 'quiet luxury'. 'On Instagram especially, everyone is always on holiday, always super brown. So it's probably just trying to keep up,' Harris says. Like Harris, Hopkins also tried a nasal spray once, via a friend who used to sell them, but it made him 'feel really sick'. Despite the known risks and side-effects, most of the young people I spoke to for this article were still willing to give nasal sprays a try. Megan Urbaniak, a 23-year-old nail technician from Rotherham, says: 'I feel as if I know a million people who use them and everyone seems to have been fine. It does kind of weird me out that they don't tell you what's in them, but I'm sure there's worse in the world.' Urbaniak is a regular sunbed user – and has even encouraged friends to use them before going on holiday 'because it stops you from burning immediately when going in the sun'. Venables is quick to debunk claims such as this, saying that all it does is put your skin through even more 'excess UV exposure'. She points to another type of common skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, which is thought to be due to cumulative UV exposure. While Urbaniak does not seem to be put off by any safety concerns, she is keen to stress that there is a 'cultural line that you probably shouldn't cross' when it comes to tanning as a white person. 'I don't think that my body is capable of going that colour, but if it was, I'd like to think someone would tell me to stop.' That said, it isn't just white people who like to tan. Melissa Jones, 19, from Chester, says she has 'seen way more people of colour – including south-east Asian girls like me – getting into tanning. For me, it's not about being darker – it's about adding that warm, radiant glow and evening out my tone'. Like Feldman, Jones uses the word 'addictive' in relation to her tanning habit, and thinks it helps her in her job as a content creator. Tanned skin 'looks amazing on camera and in content', she says. However, she has recently switched from using tanning beds to using only fake tan. 'I became more aware of the risks, like ageing, skin cancer, all of that.' The WHO has urged countries to consider banning sunbeds: Australia banned all commercial sunbeds 10 years ago and Brazil banned them in 2009. Kukadia and Venables both say they would like them banned in the UK. Jak Howell, a 26-year-old content creator from Swansea, has been urging his followers to stop using sunbeds since he was diagnosed with stage three advanced melanoma when he was 21, which his doctors were surprised to see in someone so young, and said was probably due to his use of sunbeds. Howell had been using sunbeds regularly since he was 15 (it has been illegal for under-18s to use tanning beds since 2010, but the ones Howell used weren't staffed. Customers bought tokens from a machine and slotted them into the beds). When a mole appeared on his back that 'kept bleeding and scabbing over but never healing', he sent a photograph of it to his GP and was immediately referred to hospital. He underwent radiotherapy and surgeries to remove his lymph nodes, but these failed to remove the cancer. Eventually, after a year of immunotherapy, which 'completely knocks you for six', he went into remission. Howell now wants to see sunbeds banned. He tells young users: 'OK, it hasn't happened yet, but it could happen. And when it does happen, it is far, far worse than anything I could ever describe and you could ever imagine.' For many young people, though, the allure of the sunbed's 'instant fix' is too great to resist. And it's not as if this is the first time young people have put themselves at risk. As Kukadia points out: 'If alcohol was discovered or invented now, it would be illegal.' But tanning does feel different from other classic rebellious pursuits such as binge drinking, cigarettes and drugs because people don't do it for fun, but to achieve a certain aesthetic – a symptom, perhaps, of our screen-filtered lives. 'If I wasn't on social media, I probably wouldn't use sunbeds,' Feldman admits, but because her job requires social media use, she can't see herself stopping. A few years ago, Clark noticed a dark, 'pretty scary-looking' lesion on her leg, and was referred to a dermatologist. Though it didn't turn out to be skin cancer-related, she had to have it removed, and the experience has stopped her being so 'frivolous' with tanning beds. Urbaniak can't see herself giving up either. 'If something were to go wrong, then maybe I'd reconsider,' she says. 'But I feel as if I'm in that generation where we all just live in denial until something happens.'
Daily Mail
28-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Resorts across Europe are now employing security to tackle sunbed fights - and they're even removing towels
As holidaymakers jet off on their travels abroad this summer, some hotels are having to find different ways to handle sunbed shortages, and tensions. Gone are the days of waking up early and putting your towel down on a sunbed to secure a good spot by the pool. Now, some hotels are employing security to help keep things under control after several videos have gone viral of people battling it out for sun loungers. Another tourist, @grantsimpson10, posted a video on TikTok of a security guard opening gates to the pool area at Spring Bitacora hotel in Tenerife and dozens of tourists flooding in with their towels at hand. A viewer commented on the clip, revealing they had holidayed there previously and said: 'Stayed there two years ago great hotel but the sun lounger situation was an absolute joke do they still have a security guard?' The poster replied, confirming the establishment had staff 'patrolling' the area still. 'Yeah still got two patrolling it until 8am for opening the gates,' they wrote. Spring Bitacora isn't the only hotel to employ such methods to help tackle the increasingly common sun bed battles. Someone else, @seejonj, posted on TikTok a clip sharing that their hotel in Turkey employed security guards to remove towels from 'unaccompanied' sun loungers before 7am. They captioned the video: 'Sun lounger etiquette, no unaccompanied towels allowed before 7am. 'In all fairness there is plenty and plenty of loungers. always a space and the staff a super friendly and will find you a linger and set it up for you. 'No need to be out at 0630. We've seen the same few people out at 0530!! putting their towels down.' The video, taken at 6.30am, showed dozens of sun beds positioned neatly, most of them with towels already spread across them. The holidaymaker revealed the 'majority of loungers taken with towels'. In a caption over the video, they added: 'The security guard removes them unless you stay with the towels. 'No unaccompanied towels before 7am.' @seejonj Sun lounger etiquette 😩 no unaccompanied towels allowed before 7am. in all fairness there is plenty and plenty of loungers. always a space and the staff a super friendly and will find you a linger and set it up for you. no need to be out at 0630. We've seen the same few people out at 0530!! putting their towels down. #fyp #eftaliaaquaresort #towelchallenge #summer2025 #turkeytiktok #eftalia #sunlounger #loungerwars ♬ original sound - HeyZeusGetLoose Footage at Spring Bitacora hotel showing how security have been employed to help keep things under control after several videos have gone viral of people battling it out for sun loungers abroad It comes after holidaymakers were left shocked as they watched a 'stampede' unfold for prime sunbed spots at a popular five-star hotel in Crete - sparked by influencers who wanted to take selfies 'all day' on them. Chaotic scenes unfolded at Akasha Beach Hotel & Spa, located in Hersonissos, which saw dozens of guests charging towards available loungers as the pool opened for the day. The luxury hotel has become a hit on social media in recent months thanks to its modern and 'clean' aesthetic, providing visually appealing backdrops for photos and videos, which is a key factor for content creators. The hotel's multiple pools, private beach, and spa facilities also offer a range of opportunities for influencers to create engaging content and share unique experiences with their followers.
