Empty parks with no open sites.
An article on a study done in Colorado concerning booked sites and no shows, as well as some potential issues with park personnel saving sites. rvtravel If the story is true, Colorado is changing s...
Forum Discussion
Tvov wrote:
One way to help this would be to make reservations 100% prepay in advance, and cancellations require a 2 week notice - or you lose your prepayment.
There have been so many times where I read about people using "the system" to reserve and cancel at popular places in order to get what they want. Fort Wilderness is a prime example of this - or at least was 10 years ago, the last time we were there.
I don't see how that would help. Especially at state parks where the site is so cheap that you can book sites on days you "might" want to go, and if you don't go, it's not that much money and you don't even bother to cancel, since you won't get a refund.
A better policy would be to allow refunds up to the day of arrival with, say a 50% penalty (if there's no penalty, people would just book every weekend until they decide when they want to go), at least that way there's incentive to cancel. They could even charge a no-show fee. You get 50% back if you cancel before arrival, but pay a $100 fee if you no-show without cancelling.
But this all assumes that the goal is to maximize the number of people that can enjoy the park -- in reality, parks don't care about non-refundable no-shows since they get paid without doing any work.
