Campgrounds and RV parks

Your sites are not interchangeable. The per-site fee does not care.

Length, hookup, pull-through or back-in decides who can physically stay where, so fitting rigs to pads is the real work of running a park. The software is billed on how many pads you have, or on how often you book them, neither of which is that work.

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What a park or resort usually rents

The reservation system is the spine, and everything the campground actually does besides nightly stays tends to be an upper tier or a second product.

Reservation and site assignment systemPer site per month whether the site is open or shut, or a fee on every reservation, often added to the camper's total at checkout.

Seasonal and annual contract billingAn add-on or a higher tier, because the base plan is written for nightly stays and monthly, seasonal and storage agreements are treated as the exception.

Gate access and metered utilitiesPer gate device or per meter, with the hardware hired on top and the readings usually typed in by hand anyway.

Camp store and point of saleA terminal fee plus a share of each sale, charged above whatever the card processor already takes.

Guest email and text messagingPriced by the number of contacts, so every season of returning campers makes the list more expensive to keep.

Billed on ground you own, or on bookings you have to move

Per-site pricing bills you for ground rather than for trade. A park with a hard winter pays for every closed site through the months nothing is taken, and a row of new tent pitches or a couple of glamping units raises the monthly line the day they go on the map, not the day they earn. The season is short and the subscription is not, and that gap is most of the argument by itself.

A fee on each reservation lands hardest on exactly the stays you are trying to encourage. One night carries the same charge as a fortnight, so a weekend built from short bookings costs more to sell than the same money from one long one. Moving a camper to another pad, splitting a stay or rebooking a washed-out weekend can each count as a fresh reservation, so the office tidying the map is generating fees while it works.

None of it is priced for the half of the business that is not nightly. Seasonal and annual holders pay in instalments, have their meters read, store a caravan over winter and renew in a set order, and that is a module or a tier rather than the base plan. Where it has not been bought, it lives in a ledger beside the screen, which is why so many parks still run the day off a paper map.

What we rebuild for a park

An inventory that knows what a site isPad length, thirty-amp, fifty-amp, full hookup or dry, pull-through or back-in, slide and awning clearance, shade and pet rules, so a rig that will not fit cannot book the pad.
Site assignment and the shuffleMove a reservation to another pad and see the gap it opens, hold flexible bookings loose so a long stay can be fitted in, and find the one arrangement that takes a full holiday weekend.
Seasonal and annual contracts beside nightly staysInstalment schedules, meter readings and utility charges, winter storage, guest passes, and a renewal order that follows the one your regulars already expect.
Rules by dateMinimum stays on holiday weekends, arrival-day restrictions, deposit and cancellation windows by season, and rates that differ between a pull-through on the water and a tent pitch in the trees.
Add-ons in the same orderFirewood, golf cart hire, extra vehicles, pets and late checkout bought with the booking, so the office knows what to have ready before the rig arrives.

What stays rented

Listing channels and marketplacesThe sites that put your park in front of travellers planning a route are a network, not software. Keep them as channels and let them read one availability calendar so they cannot sell a pad you have already filled.
Card processingDeposits, balances, store sales and seasonal instalments all pay the processor's rate whichever system creates the booking.
Agency reservation systems on a concessionIf you operate a state, county or park service concession that requires the public to book through the agency's own system, that system remains their record and we build the park's side around it.

The morning your booking window opens

Parks that sell out do not sell out evenly. The window opens months ahead, the holiday weekends and the waterfront pads go in the time it takes to make coffee, and the midweek shoulder sits half empty all season. That handful of minutes decides a large share of the year, and it is the moment your reservation system has to survive with every returning family refreshing the same page hoping for the same pad they had last time.

Owning the system means the rules of that morning are yours to set. Whether the window rolls forward date by date or opens in one release, whether last year's holder gets first refusal on their own pad, whether a specific site can be locked and at what price, whether a queue is fair or the fastest click wins. We size for your busiest hour rather than your average one, and prove it on shoulder-season dates before it is trusted with the weekend that pays for the year.

Questions campground and RV park owners ask

Can we stop a big rig booking a pad it will not fit on?

Yes, and it is the reason to own the system rather than rent one. The camper gives rig length, type, slides and hookup needed, and only the pads that genuinely take it are offered. The sites that are wrong never appear, so the call where somebody arrives and cannot get in stops happening.

Can the office still move people between sites?

Yes, freely. Reassignment is treated as an ordinary daily job rather than a cancellation and a rebooking, so moving a party costs nothing, keeps their record and their balance, and shows you what the move opens up. Holding flexible bookings loose until closer to arrival is how a park fills a weekend that otherwise has a hole in the middle.

Do we keep the bookings that come from listing channels?

Yes. Those channels stay exactly as they are, because they bring travellers who were never going to find you directly. What changes is what sits behind them: one availability calendar that every channel reads, so a pad sold on a channel is gone from your own site immediately.

We are a small park. Is this worth doing?

Quite possibly not, and we would rather say it. If you run a modest number of sites on a basic plan and the season is short, renting is the right answer. Add up a year of per-site and per-reservation charges, plus the store and messaging tools, with the calculator on this site, and if the figure is small, keep what you have.

Keep reading

Free toolSoftware bill calculatorType in how you are billed, per seat, per unit or per ticket, and see what it comes to over a year and over three.Open the calculator

GuideOwning your software: the build or rent guideBuild or rent, switching risk, running two systems side by side, who maintains it, getting your data out, and when not to go custom.Read the guide

Published feesWhat the platforms chargeEvery rate read from the vendor's own pricing page, dated, and totalled over a year.See the fees

Who it's forMarinas and boating eventsYou bill by the foot. Your software bills by the berth.Read this page

Who it's forVacation rental managersFive tools, each billed per unit. Add a property and every line goes up.Read this page

Send us what your reservation system charges

The per-site or per-booking rate, how many sites you run, and how much of the season and contract side is done by hand.

Hiro costs about a tenth of what you pay now, quoted against your own bill. Hosting, fixes and changes included, and no per-seat fees.