This ‘entitled’ cruise ship act is one of the worst etiquette offenses on overseas voyages: travel expert

Reserving a pool deck chair on a cruise is the equivalent of passengers who recline their seat on a flight – both are controversial topics.

If you’re a cruiser, you understand cruise etiquette is a big thing, whether it’s unwritten rules like not cutting in lines to restaurants, or those clearly spelled out in cruise liners’ guest conduct policies – like hogging pool deck chairs.

It happens to be one of the worst cruise etiquette offenses that continues to happen without fail on most ships.

Cruiser and US travel content creator Jessica, known as ‘Jesstravel7’ on TikTok, shared a clip of several rows of pool chairs reserved with towels on them, lashing at the act.

“This is what you call entitlement on a cruise ship; saving all these pool chairs,” she said.

Jessica, who was traveling on Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas, begged fellow cruisers not to save pool chairs if you’re not at the pool.

“Do not do this. If you are not here, do not save the seats, people are looking for seats.

“This is called entitlement.”

When some viewers questioned that perhaps the guests went to grab a drink, Jessica explained that wasn’t the case.

“These people went on an excursion and didn’t come back five hours later expecting their chairs to be there,” she said.

Others argued it was “planning ahead”.

“That’s not entitlement. You can plan ahead too!” one person commented.

“Entitlement would be showing up late and thinking you deserve a seat that is first come first serve…” a second wrote, while a third demanded, “No, it’s not”.

“It is called, I woke up the crack of dawn and saved seats. It is called. I AM NOT NEW TO THIS.”

However, many sided with Jessica, saying guests who want to use the chairs should just remove the towels.

“I hate that ppl wake up at, 6am doing this (sic),” one cruiser demanded.

“I’ll just remove their towels and use whatever seat I want. If you’re not at the pool, you don’t get to save a seat,” said another.

Royal Caribbean has a strict policy that explains pool deck chairs are only available on a first come, first served basis and cannot be reserved.

“We want to ensure that all guests have a great time at the pool. If a pool chair is left unattended for more than 30 minutes with no signs of any guests returning, our crew will remove any belongings and place them in the lost and found,” it explains on its site.

Norwegian Cruise Line, Carnival and other lines also prohibit passengers from reserving pool chairs.

But some guests have argued staff need to be more attentive, with Jessica claiming it took three hours for employees to remove the towels.

The controversial topic also blew up on Reddit in a fan community group for the cruise liner a week ago, after someone shared a photo with towels on a bunch of chairs at 8:30 a.m. on Utopia.

“They really need to deploy staff at the pools early in the morning, a few on each side of the pools who can just tell people as soon as they put stuff down and start to walk away that they can’t do that,” one person wrote.

“It would go a long way to start to curb the behaviour. People will ignore signs, they would be way less inclined to ignore a person.”

One person who sailed on Norwegian Cruise Line shared a more positive experience on the dilemma.

“On Escape last week they were marking unoccupied chairs and pulling towels and personal effects. Chairs were all full at 9am but around 10 onwards they were starting to clear off chairs,” the cruiser wrote in the NCL community on Reddit.

“I honestly didn’t think they had the commitment to do it, glad they are trying to enforce the rules.”