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2010-08-29

Beach resort rules

Pulau Tioman, August 2010

In general, I'm not particularly interested in sheer beach resorts, where the most essential activity seems to be lying in the sun and barbecuing oneself - or more nastily put, purposefully making your skin look older and increasing the risk for skin cancer. Nevertheless I'm not entirely against beach life, so in case a specific resort offers something else too, a beach and/or pool are certainly a welcome addition.

However, even with my limited experience on beach resorts, I've still come under the impression that many of them have a rather peculiar practice: since the amount of deckchairs is limited, people wake up early in the morning, pick up towels from the hotel and use them to reserve deckchairs from the beach or the pool, after which they go back to sleep, to have breakfast or to do both. This doesn't make much sense now, does it?

In terms of the enjoyability of a resort in general, this isn't very fruitful: the deckchairs may stand there empty, even though there would be people interested in taking them, and on the other hand the abusers of the system have to wake up earlier than they otherwise would. Wouldn't it be better if the beach would have a guideline like this or something similar:
"Deckchairs cannot be reserved with mere towels or other personal belongings for a time period longer than the duration of a swim."
Based on this, deckchairs having just towels and no-one around could be easily claimed and the actual utilization rate for the decks would be improved.

Despite its simplicity and low meaningfulness, this small problem can actually be seen as analogous with bigger issues in bigger communities, namely societies: some may claim the right for certain commodities or assets, even though it would be more beneficial to others.

In case some one with experience on beach resort deckchair reserving policies ends up reading this blog, I would appreciate any comments on the subject.


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