Calgary company Camp Reservations Canada is making a name for itself after just one year in business.
“We’re almost at our 5,000th booking,” co-founder Keith Leong said. “So far, we’ve got about 50 campgrounds.”
Leong and his wife Renee Anseeuw came up with the idea a couple of years ago while searching for a campsite for the Canada Day long weekend.
“All the provincial and national campgrounds were booked,” he said.
Calling around to all of the smaller, private campgrounds was time consuming, so they started to envision a website that centralized all of those campgrounds.
“There’s thousands of these all over Canada and there really isn’t a central location to find them,” Leong said.
They developed their idea into a website, taking it a step further with their fees — or rather lack of them.
“This is completely free for all of the campgrounds and we only charge the camper a $5 reservation fee.”
It may not sound like much of a money-maker but Anseeuw said in a growing sector, it’s sustainable.
“The market size in Canada for our segment right now is actually $700 million.”
Their business strategy has certainly paid off. They now have clients in four provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador, meaning they have a campground on each coast.
The first to sign on was the Village of Carbon. Mayor Bryan Peever said the system has taken a load off of administrative staff.
“The village would be inundated by phone calls,” Peever said. “You couldn’t do anything else in the village office for days while people tried to call in to book.”
Camp Reservations Canada currently employs seven people but hopes to grow that number as it grows its system across Canada and then hopefully into the United States.
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