Booking system leaves campers in the lurch

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This article was published 05/04/2021 (1643 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many campers hoping to book a yurt were hurt by the province’s online camping booking system on Monday.

An unknown number of Manitobans looking to book a yurt or cabin in a provincial park this summer, a campsite at Birds Hill Provincial Park, or a group-use area became unhappy campers when a computer glitch kicked them out of the system about an hour after it opened, forcing them to restart at the back of the line.

It meant, for many, their camping dream this year stayed just that — a dream.

Megan Maxwell, along with relatives and friends, had a total of 11 electronic devices in action trying to book a spot at Spruce Woods Provincial Park and Tulabi Falls in Nopiming Provincial Park.

Maxwell said out of those 11, only two finally got through to book a spot, but by then there was little left and nothing they could use.

“It was so busy that in under one minute my friends and family had ticket numbers ranging from 337 up to 12,000,” said Maxwell.

“I heard there were folks with numbers into the 25,000s. I’d be curious to know if the system even has that number of spots available.”

Maxwell was number 2,407 when she logged in at 7 a.m., but one hour later, just as she reached the front of the line, the system suddenly kicked her out, forcing her to start over — with 21,999 people ahead of her.

“Three hours later there was nothing. Nothing except for the odd night here and there. We’ll try again next year, but it’s a big disappointment.”

It was a similar situation and same result for Jeope Wolfe.

“I’ve been waiting two months for this day,” said Wolfe.

“I knew it was a long shot so I was prepared to look for the last week before Labour Day in the middle of the week.”

Wolfe said when he logged onto the site it was like he won the lottery.

“I was 70th — I couldn’t believe my luck,” he said. “Twenty minutes later I went straight to the site I wanted and booked it and went to the payment page.

“It was almost like karma — I was ready with a screen shot, to brag, and then I was (kicked) out. I was number 6,000 then. I can laugh now, but I was pretty grumpy then.”

On Wednesday, campsite reservations open for spots in Whiteshell Provincial Park, as well as Winnipeg Beach, while on April 12, reservations open for remaining provincial parks.

A provincial government spokesman said the problem was the large number of people who were trying to make reservations with Manitoba Parks.

“(It was) much higher than when the reservation system opened for bookings for the season a year ago,” said the spokesman.

He said 12,825 people signed on in the opening minute of registration on Monday. Last year, 2,804 users logged on during the same time period.

Four hours later on Monday, Manitoba Parks had booked 10,668 reservations compared with 5,706 at the same time last year.

In fact, the number of reservations in the first four hours dwarfed the 6,153 reservations taken during the entire first day last year.

The spokesman acknowledged a booking system issue was identified at the height of registrations.

“During the online rush for site reservations on Monday morning, a technical issue was encountered but resolved quickly and processing returned to normal,” he said.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca