Holiday sunbed wars: Germans say they have proved Brits are the worst for towel hogging

German newspaper Bild calls UK a nation of ‘lounger squatters’

Towel wars: German paper claims Brits are the worst when it comes to sun-lounger hogging

For decades the cliché that Germany is a nation of poolside sun-lounger hoggers has been repeated by many a British holiday maker, joking about the need to get up crack of dawn to beat those efficient Germans and their territorial towels to the golden beds.

But now it appears that this hackneyed phrase has been turned on its head, and the result will be less than pleasing to some.

German tabloid newspaper Bild­ claims is the British who hug those desperately sought after sunbeds, not the Germans.

In a highly scientific study, the newspaper monitored the progression of sun-lounger claiming activities using towels at the Lloret de Mar resort hotel in Costa Brava.

The newspaper took two aerial shots of the pool and its surrounding loungers, one at 7:36 am, and one nearly two hours later.

A man sunbathes on Levante Beach in Benidorm, Spain (Getty)

In the first photo, none of the loungers have been taken. In the second one, all of the loungers had been taken, but only two people were using the beds.

Bild helpfully identified three loungers it believed to belong to Brits with a red ring. Two of the offending towels that had been circled showed either the Union Jack or the flag of St George.

The newspaper canvassed a bunch of Brits with their towels out and found that people many had had to queue up at around 8:50 am because there weren’t enough spaces, or in one case, lay out seven towels for the whole family or risk not having any space together at all.

Bild then declared "the English are the worst lounger squatters".

The article then went on to describe the British abroad as having “Prince Harry Syndrome”, which is a compulsive need to undress, after having previously accused British holiday makers as being drunk, stupid, sunburnt, fat, and covered in bad tattoos.