New service aims to open up private property to camping

A new camping service allows campers to set up on private property.

The new service is called Pitched.

Pitched brings together people who have underused rural property with those who are tired of the typical camping scenario.

Co-founder and camper Lindsay Irwin would see waterfront property ideal for camping and wondered why not see if the owner would be open to the idea.

“You see great places to camp, you’re just not supposed to camp there, or you shouldn’t. It’s different when you find these fantastic places and all of a sudden you have access to them. What’s great about Pitched is there’s accessibility, there’s access, there’s convenience, really everything you want in a camping experience,” Irwin said.

Irwin and her business partner Olaf Dunn are both avid campers but have been frustrated by the difficulty in booking campsites at provincial parks which must be made months in advance and fill up quickly.

Prospective property owners are contacted and invited to take part in “Pitched’ and to suggest nearby activities of interest to campers. Property owners are free to set their own rates and can charge more if further activities are included.

Dunn says they take a 10 % commission on all reservations and 5 % on each camper to pay admin costs.

“You can combine camping with canoeing or bike riding or ATV’ing. You can combine it with yoga activities. We try to make it more an experiential camping experience rather than just straight up, let’s go camping. It’s been fantastic, from a camper’s perspective we’ve had numerous campers coming back saying I might never go provincial park camping ever again, this experience beat it by far,” says Pitched co-founder Olaf Dunn

‘Pitched’ was launched with help from the Peterborough Innovation Cluster. Marketing manager Rose Terry says after one season, they are finding property owners are happy with the program.

“Right now, they are working with beta testers who were originally testing it and they are finding they were covering a lot of their property costs by listing their sites for campers. Pitched is a perfect example of a startup we’re working with that we were like,  ‘Wow, I can’t believe this doesn’t exist right now” said Terry.