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Comment by timmaah | Hacker News Reader

I screen scrape camping reservations and send out notifications when a campsite becomes available.

http://reserve.wanderinglabs.com/

Currently working on integrating the new CA reserve website. It is a shit show.

I can see this being a nice little side project. I work with a bunch of people that camp and in my province (Alberta) we have a rolling reserve window. People will book a campsite for a week prior to their intended trip just so they can get a spot. Provincial parks have since put an end to it by forcing someone to occupy the site within the first 24hrs or they cancel your entire reservation. It's cut throat here.

I'm really surprised how popular it has become. Reserving 11 months in advance leads to a lot of plans being canceled and sites popping up at random times.

True. In AB it's a 3 month rolling window I believe. People will sell their reservation online if they can't make it rather than outright cancel it. Perhaps a new feature for your site? Rental sales (?)...or sub-rentals? Not sure what you would call that :)

Interesting—we’re doing something similar with https://www.campnab.com

Currently available in B.C., Ontario, and Washington State. Now adding national parks in Canada.

Excellent user experience. Thanks for including Washington State. I'm already sharing this with friends.

Looking good. Nice to see there is a small little market for this type of thing.

Awesome tool. But I wish your site monitored Zion NP. One of the busiest parks in the US. I can never score a campsite, and the first-come ones fill up by 7am.

It does. You will want to search for "Watchman Campground"

Just throwing this out that you should definitely include the park name in the search. I would have never thought of that. I just checked recreation.gov API and it has all that info there. Moreover, if a park has multiple campsites you could include all monitoring in that search.

Well done. I was talking to a colleague earlier this week about creating something similar for WA. We have the exact same problem with reservation windows being several months in advance and cancellations popping up.

I wasn't aware of ReserveAmerica. I always go straight to state or national parks sites to reserve.

What's the differentiator between what wanderinglabs offers vs. reserve america - pull checks & notifications?

Interesting premium payment options. Can you share a rough breakdown of what people have paid? Do you think if you made the low end $5/$15 it would change revenue much?

I'd say 90+% of the people pay the lowest option of $10. I doubt lower would bring in many more people. I have a rewrite about ready with the amounts being radio button with the non lowest amount selected. I be this brings in a little more per person without a big drop of in count.

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