The focus of this post is public campgrounds, such as those run by counties, states, the US Forest Service or the National Park Service.

You want to go camping next month for a week. Hopping on the Internet you navigate to the online reservation system and find that almost every campsite is reserved for Friday and Saturday, but the other five days of the week are available to reserve. Almost no one is camping on those dates. In other words, 70% of sites are sitting empty generating zero income.

The Problem

Typically, campsites that accept reservations open up availability 6 months in advance. With popular campgrounds, people are up at midnight waiting for 12:01 AM so they can be first to reserve a spot at their favorite campground, and often they only reserve a site for a single weekend. This isn’t how a reservation system should work.

Below is a screen shot from a campground that has 160 campsites. I could not enlarge it to show more campsite, but rest of  the sites in the campground were similar. Lots of availability if you want to camp Sunday night thru Thursday night. If you want to camp for more that 5 days, nothing is available until after Labor Day weekend.

Few people are going to agree with my solution, unless it aligns with what they want to see happen. It’s controversial.

We Rarely Camp Where Reservations are Available

If a campground is popular and accepts reservations we are not going to camp there.

We have a few exceptions. One exception is a campground we often camp in after Labor Day when the crowds diminish. If I don’t make reservations and just show up, I will find most sites have been reserved for the weekend. It I make reservations a month in advance, I can find plenty of sites that are available for 14 days. If I wait a week before our trip, then most of the sites have been reserved for weekends only.

Evolution of Campground Reservations

When I started camping in the ’60s and through the ’70s there were not any reservation systems that I know of. In fact, many USFS and NPS campgrounds were free.

In the ’80s Sequoia National Forest implemented a reservation system for its more popular campgrounds during late spring and the summer. Given the technology (no Internet or cell phones) it was inefficient and costly to administer. You had to call or fax reservation requests, which had to be individually processed by an actual human being. Plus, at the forest entrance, a roadside trailer was set up to receive every single person with a reservation. The roadside facility would then confirm the reservation and issue a confirmation tag for the specific campground and campsite that had to be attached to the campsite number post. This system was discontinued fairly quickly and the unit went back to First Come, First Serve. No reservations at all.

How Almost Any Reservation Should Work

I have expertise with appointment systems. As a young man I owned a small hotel in a tourist destination, where many people wanted to spend just a weekend, not a week or more. If I wasn’t careful, I could end up with the problem of 30% occupancy rate for the month, which would mean I would go broke. Reserving hotel rooms is similar to reserving campground sites.

In the late ’90s I started working with appointment systems in new car dealership service departments. These operations do not sell rooms or sites — they sell hours. That is, they sell the number of hours each technician will be available to work. Part of my education was studying dentist offices, which also sell hours — how many hours the dentist and dental assistants will be available to work. Dentists and car service departments want to sell all the hours available, not sell more hours than they can work, and to be as convenient as possible.

An exception to selling more capacity than you have would be airlines, who often sell more seats than the airplane has. If you have ever arrived at an airport where your reservation is no good because the plane has been oversold, you know what a nightmare that is. You will probably hate that airline for the rest of your life.

By the early 2000s I was considered an appointment subject matter expert in my industry and I created quite a few computerize appointment system that worked.

The Appointment System Goal

An appointment system should make it convenient for customers to make an appointment, which online systems are. This is the need of the customer. Of course, you cannot always get your first choice if there is more demand than available slots.

In a business, you want to sell all your available hours, sites, rooms, or whatever commodity you sell to the public. Many companies or public entities do not presell (make appointments) all their inventory. They may set aside some inventory for “walk-in” or “drive-in” customers.

Public campgrounds (government owned) should try to fill all their campsites to achieve high occupancy rates every day of the week.

Remember I mentioned that camping used to be free. No longer true in developed campgrounds. Campgrounds are expensive to maintain. Things wear out and break, roads deteriorate as do the actual campsites over time. Restrooms need to be cleaned daily, campsites need to be cleaned if the last occupants were pigs. Trash bins need to be emptied, and so forth.

If enough money cannot be generated to cover these fixed and variable expenses due to low occupancy rates, then camping fees will have to be increased. If the fees become too expensive, fewer people will use the campground, which will drive the rates even higher until the agency will simply close the campground. I know of many campgrounds that have serious infrastructure problems or a lack of maintenance, because there are not enough funds to make needed improvements or repairs. I also know of some campground that have simply been closed because they are no longer safe for the public and there is no money to rectify the problems.

My Solution

• Make sure there are some “first come, first serve” sites available. Many campgrounds already do this.
• Keep the six month window in place  (no reservations more than six months in advance).
• For the first month of the open period only allow reservations for 14 days (most popular campgrounds have a max of 14 days).
• For the second month of the open period only allow reservations for 7 or more days.
• For the rest of the open period (4 months) allow any reservations for any time, except weekends (Friday and Saturday), which will need a minimum of a two day stay.