Eager campers have set an all-time record for reservations at B.C. Parks this year, says the government.
More than 115,000 camping reservations were made through the province’s Discover Camping service, a 12 per cent increase from last year, the Ministry of Environment said Tuesday.
In part, it’s due to the growing popularity of the government’s online reservation system, which lets campers select their exact campsites up to three months in advance, said Nathalie Dechaine, business and policy analyst with B.C. Parks. More than 90 per cent of people are now making reservations online, with a handful of people still paying a $5 surcharge to book by phone, said Dechaine.
The top three camping sites on the Island for reservations last year were Rathtrevor Beach, Miracle Beach and Goldstream.
Parks began taking reservations in 1995 through a call centre. “You would phone in and they would pick the site for you, and you wouldn’t know when you arrived at the park where they’d put you,” said Dechaine. “Now, you can pick a spot that meets your needs. If you have a big trailer with a bunch of pullouts, or you want the quiet spot near the lake … you can pick your own site.”
The parks website has become so popular, people plot the best tactics and manoeuvres to secure their peak-time reservations, said Dechaine. The website can get quickly overwhelmed with traffic, she said.
For the 2014 camping season, sites will be released three months in advance, and become available when the phone line opens each morning at 7.
So, for a hard-to-get summer booking at Rathtrevor Provincial Park — one of the most popular in the province — campers should start scouring the website in April or May at 7 a.m. Reservations for group campsites are available 12 months in advance.
Oceanfront or lakefront campsites close to urban centres are usually the most popular each year and fill up quickly, said Dechaine. One tip for next summer is to plan a midweek camping trip in a park a little farther away from a town or city to have a good chance at a reservation, she said.
Around half the province’s 11,000 campsites are on the reservation system, Dechaine said.
The government conducts an annual review of the park camp system, to tweak the experience for the following year, she said.
Many parks remain open throughout September, depending on the weather.
