Campers suspect ‘bots’ are nabbing the best B.C. Parks campsites

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Gillian Burnett says booking a campsite at a popular B.C. provincial park is “a little like the Ticketmaster experience.”

“They’re gone so quickly it makes you think, ‘There’s no way that’s a human,’ ” she said of her experience recently trying to snag a site at Porteau Cove Provincial Park.

Burnett isn’t the only camper questioning why it has become so hard to book a campsite at some B.C. parks, despite a crackdown on reselling.

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Public outcry prompted B.C. Parks to close the loopholes that once allowed people to buy sites and resell them for profit — and for the most part, the changes seem to have worked.

B.C. Parks said it no longer tracks how many times it has caught people trying to resell sites because it happens so rarely. A scan of Facebook Marketplace, Kijiji and Craigslist seems to bear that out.

In June, B.C. Parks cancelled two reservations in the Sea-to-Sky region after someone posted them for sale online. It was unclear how the seller hoped to skirt rules that require the person booking the site to show identification to claim it.

But as technology continues to improve, some campers are suspicious about the speed with which available sites are snapped up.

Burnett said she got into camping with her kids during the pandemic.

“The biggest challenge, by far, has been booking spaces,” she said.

After a year of constant problems, she decided to subscribe to an app that scans campgrounds for cancellations and sends her a text message when something becomes available. For $30 a month, she is able to select the campgrounds and dates she wants to watch, as well as some other parameters. B.C. Parks and at least one other company offer a similar notification service.

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“I’ve had mixed success,” said Burnett.

For the campgrounds closest to the Lower Mainland, including Porteau Cove, Alice Lake and Rolley Lake, she has been unable to secure a space for her requested dates, apart from a trip to Alice Lake in September.

“I click as soon as the alert appears, and 98 per cent of the time it’s taken, sometimes in seconds,” she said. “It’s all highly suspect.”

A site that opened up on Thursday night was only available for two seconds before it was gone again.

But Eric Shelkie, the co-founder of campsite availability tracker Campnab, said he doesn’t think bots are to blame. He hasn’t noticed people reselling sites, and believes B.C. Parks has put enough roadblocks in the way to eliminate the practice.

Like the app Burnett uses, his service scans for cancellations and alerts subscribers by text message so they can book them.

“People don’t want to be hitting refresh all day long,” he said.

But timing is key. If B.C. Parks or another app finds a cancellation first and gets its notification out to subscribers sooner, it can be booked again very quickly.

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“I think it’s absolutely just high demand,” he said.

Last year, Shelkie and his extended family tried to secure a site at a provincial park in the Shuswap. In a coordinated attempt involving several people, they planned ahead and got up at 7 a.m. four months before the date they wanted. Two people got a site, while the majority did not.

“In two seconds, everything was gone,” he said. “It’s so stressful.”

Campnab was born out of Shelkie’s own frustration with the reservation system and his tendency to procrastinate about planning camping trips several months in advance. The service, which began in B.C., has proven popular and has since expanded to parks across Canada and the United States.

In a statement, the Ministry of Environment said it is not concerned about bots and resellers because “campers can only book a maximum of three reservations at a time (and) we don’t allow bulk reservation bookings.” Campers need to show ID to match the reservation when they show up at the campground.

B.C. Parks said 30,000 people used its new “Notify Me” feature in 2023.

“B.C. Parks is not concerned about the existence of other notification services. Paid services do not have access to cancellation information any sooner than Notify Me, so these commercial services confer no unfair advantage or prevent others from reserving sites.”

There were more than 60,000 campsite cancellations in 2022, with the largest number occurring within two weeks of the arrival date.

For tips and tricks on how to snag your favourite site in a B.C. provincial park, check out Postmedia’s campground reservation guide.

gluymes@postmedia.com

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