Anyone looking to pitch a tent at a provincial campsite this summer had better hope they have a reservation – but getting one is easier said than done.
“You used to be able to just kind of go, ‘Hey, let’s go camping!’” said Staci French will relaxing in her site at Cultus Lake. “Now you have to think, what am I doing three months from now. It’s hard. Especially if you work.”
The province’s online booking system allows people to make a reservation up to 90 days in advance, but some people have figured out a way around that to get a jump on the competition.
By booking a two week reservation and then cancelling the first 10 days people are able to book highly coveted long weekends ahead of time.
The province says it has also received a handful of reports about people re-selling their camping reservations for a profit like scalpers do with concert tickets.
But Environment Minister Mary Polak says these activities are only a small fraction of the problem when it comes to booking a provincial campsite.
She says the real issue is one of supply and demand.
"We only have 5,600 reservable campsites. So, very quickly you can see we have a very limited resource,” said Polak.
Complaints of the online reservation system crashing during peak times are also common.
Brittany Dawson and her friends camp at Porteau Cove every year in June and in order to make sure they get a spot, they all log on to the system at the same time.
This year, they thought they had secured a space – and then the system crashed.
“But unfortunately it wasn't booked. The site crashed, we couldn't get on, we couldn't book anything,” said Dawson. “She finally got this one but it took about four hours."
The province has no plans to create more campsites so people may still have to endure online booking frustration before getting away from it all.
