Imagine going on vacation at a nice resort. You’re ready to head down to the pool to sit and relax, but when you get there, there are no chairs available. Not because they’re all occupied, but because people have spread their towels over a bunch of them, saving them for people who aren’t even at the pool.
Dawn Gilbertson, a travel columnist for The Wall Street Journal, says that’s one of the biggest complaints many resorts face. And, while they try to encourage guests to be considerate of one another, one resort in Hawai’i has taken enforcement of the pool chair rules a step further. The enforcer’s name is Tom Cooper, and he’s been called many things, including the "poolice."
Gilbertson recently spent a couple of days with Cooper and joined The Show to talk about about the experience, starting with how she got connected with Tom in the first place.
Full conversation
DAWN GILBERTSON: This is a topic that I’ve been fascinated with for several years. Pool chair hogs are a big problem for resorts and destinations really across the world. Everybody wants a prime seat by the pool, so hotels have to manage that.
And I happened to be in Hawaii this summer — not on a work trip, on vacation — and at this particular Marriott. And it was just fascinating to me to watch how they had it down to a science. And miraculously, they said yes when I asked to come back and shadow for a column.
MARK BRODIE: So let’s talk through what Tom Cooper does, because as you say, he’s not just doing this willy-nilly. He’s got a system here.
GILBERTSON: This guy turned out to be, like, out of central casting, to tell you the truth. Because I watched informally. I wasn’t there working. So I watched — informally — the process this summer. But then when I arrived at the resort on Thanksgiving to shadow him for two days, two shifts, I just couldn’t believe his toolkit.
He’s got these tags that have QR codes on them. He has, almost like a coach would have, this whiteboard that has the entire layout of the pool so that he can kind of jot down with his little Sharpie offenders. It just really blew me away, to tell you the truth.
BRODIE: It kind of sounds like somebody who checks out parking meters, except at a pool.
GILBERTSON: Oh, 100%. Yeah. He basically issues pool chair tickets. I mean, it’s nowhere as onerous in terms of you’re not going to be slapped with a fine and get this thick envelope in the mail and tell you to show up in court. But it is a pool chair ticket.
So if you disappear for a couple hours to go snorkeling down the beach, you could come back to have this tag on your chair. And again, they have nice wording. It’s not in your face. It may appear that way to you when you get back, and you could get mad. But yeah, it basically says, “Here’s why we did what we did.”
BRODIE: Well, I would imagine it’s got to be kind of a delicate balance, right? Because these are still guests at your hotel that you’d probably not want to tick off. But at the same time, you have other guests who might get ticked off if somebody is reserving seven or eight chairs and they’re not there for hours on end.
GILBERTSON: Yeah, it’s always been. I mean, you talk to hotel managers anywhere — Arizona, Hawaii, Florida — big resort destinations. Cruise ships, this is a huge problem, too.
And you’re right. They have to balance the needs of people that, in today’s day and age — I mean, that Maui resort, goes for $700, $800, $900, $1,000 a night in some cases because they’re all villas.
So you’ve got people coming in that are paying all this money, or maybe being an owner and have these high expectations. At the same time, you have other people who are like, “There’s only a limited number of pool chairs. So you can’t just hog them all. It’s just a matter of courtesy and etiquette.”
BRODIE: So how does this guy handle it? If, for example, he sees there’s a time limit — that he gives people a grace period as you write. But let’s say he goes up to something, says, “OK, look, I see you’ve saved 10 seats and it’s just you.” And the person says, “Oh yeah, I got the rest of my family coming, and they’ll be here and be here in five minutes. I just got to run up and grab them right now.”
Is he able to see through, or does he choose to be able to see through all that kind of B.S. that he probably hears?
GILBERTSON: One hundred percent, especially because this resort in Maui that I visited is a timeshare resort. So a large percentage of the visitors return year after year, whether it’s a week or another week, right? So he knows a lot of these people, which in my mind makes it an even trickier job. In one minute he’s talking to this guy, about his wife’s cancer. And in the next minute he’s like, “Hey, you’re saving for chairs and there’s only one of you down here.”
You know what I mean? So he definitely doesn’t play favorites, and I think they’ve all come to respect him.
BRODIE: Is this something that other resorts do or have done in the past?
GILBERTSON: Most resorts do have pool-chair policies, and you’ll see signs. This particular one had like eight signs around the central pool. I’ve seen them. I walked a couple resorts down the beach to the Hyatt, and they have signs up. Cruise lines have signs, but the degree of enforcement really just varies so dramatically.
Sometimes that’s the honor system. I think most resorts have some kind of enforcement, maybe not as meticulous as this particular resort. But one thing that they’ve done to help address this issue and also boost revenue — what a lot of resorts have done, including some in Arizona and across the country — is they now have OpenTable-like reservation systems for pool chairs, which is a whole other topic.
BRODIE: Yeah. So you can reserve ahead of time how many chairs and where you want them, right?
GILBERTSON: Yes. For a price.
BRODIE: Wow. I would imagine, though, that as you say, this particular resort had signs up and yet this pool police guy still has a job to do. So I would imagine the honor system only takes you so far.
GILBERTSON: Yes, exactly. Because you’re right. He spent several hours every morning traversing this pool and explaining the rules to people, to newbies and reminding veteran visitors there about the rules. So, yeah. Hotels will tell you — especially big resorts in prime warm weather destinations will tell you — this issue is in their top three.
BRODIE: Given that, do you get the sense that there might be more resorts or chains that start doing some kind of enforcement as opposed to just posting signs about pool chairs?
GILBERTSON: I would certainly think so. That or move to the reservation systems. And the reservation systems, that’s a situation where if you don’t want to set an alarm on vacation and send one person in your family or two people in your family or your teenage kids down to the pool at 6 a.m., then you might be happy with paying a fee to know that when you come down at 10 a.m. after your leisurely brunch, you’ll have a chair.
But the flip side of that is vacations are too expensive. A lot of people, they don’t want an added cost. They don’t want to have to pay simply for the privilege of reserving a pool chair that’ part and parcel of what comes with your vacation.
BRODIE: It sounded like Tom had the requisite sense of humor to be able to do this kind of job.
GILBERTSON: Yes. He had the requisite sense of humor, but also what struck me was he was just so fair and did not play favorites. Perhaps the most fun part of my interview with him or my story on him was when he told me that he actually removed his wife’s towels when she visited one time because they were they were there too long.
BRODIE: Wow. That seems like a bold move on his part.
GILBERTSON: It was. And he’s like, “You know what? She knows I’m black and white.”
