3 ms·

The campground reservation system has caused me more issues than the price. I drove through a "full" campground a few weekends ago and half the spots were empt

• bombcar 4y ago
  This is something you get whenever there's a reservation system, even with a cost, if the cost is "minor" enough. And the problem with campsites is they're often far enough from the inhabited areas that you can't just "waitlist" people at the last minute like restaurants do.
  • edmcnulty101 4y ago
    Reservations at campground didn't exist until relatively recently also and that maximized the space better than the reservations systems. Another solution is a huge deposit.
• floren 4y ago
  I think online reservations are kind of a problem by being so low-friction and often free. I'm seeing more and more restaurants requiring a significant deposit with a reservation, because apparently there are a lot of no-shows. I kind of suspect that people are making several reservations for the same night, then deciding on the day which place they want to go to. Why not, when it takes about 3 clicks to go from Google Maps to a completed reservation? The deposits are OpenTable & friends' way of solving a problem that was introduced by their own product! It seems like the basic effort of picking up a phone and actually speaking to a person at the restaurant or campground to make the reservation would have two positive effects: it adds a little friction so it's not as easy to make half a dozen reservations, and when you speak to that person it reinforces in your mind that you have made an agreement to show up for this thing.