Don’t let the cold and snow fool you, it is camping season.
Maybe not quite yet, but campers in BC can now start to make online campsite reservations for May long weekend.
Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy George Heyman said they now have a very nicely functioning BC Parks reservation campsite website.
He said after many years of complaints they found a new provider and designed an entirely new system
“On Wednesday January 17, reservations opened for the May Long Weekend. We’re using a 4 month rolling window so people don’t find out in January and February that everything is booked up through Labour Day,” Heyman said.
“We have many features on the site that really make it easy for people. There are lots of pictures of the particular parks and campgrounds, an ability to search a date by region by specific parks and we put extra capacity in when we’re expecting a lot of users to come on at the same time. We haven’t experienced the crashes or the frustration that people were seeing a couple of years ago.”
Heyman noted the site is very user friendly and easy to navigate and they introduced a new feature he thinks people will really like.
“It can be very frustrating when you go to a particular park or campground and try to reserve it and you find that it’s full up and then you go to another one you like and it’s full up. Everybody knows that sometimes people cancel so we put a new Notify Me feature on the website and people can choose up to five different notifications that they request, whether it’s for a specific campsite or a date, and if that becomes available people will receive an email that they have a chance to book.”
Last year saw a 15% increase in camping bookings over 2022 – a total of 366,000 in 2023.
You can book your campsite here.