Picture this: it’s a dark, cold January morning. You woke up before dawn to sit and wait in front of your laptop, still half asleep, in the hopes of securing a coveted camping spot for your summer vacation. Coffee in hand, you count down the minutes until the online reservation window opens.

As the clock strikes 7 a.m., you’re dropped into a digital queue. But your dreams of camping at Banff National Park next summer are quickly crushed when you see the number of people ahead of you: 9,542.

That’s the scenario Cameron Fenton details in his latest piece for The Walrus, and it’s one many Canadian outdoor enthusiasts have experienced in recent years.

According to guidebook author Taryn Eyton, whom Fenton interviewed, the problem is simple: supply and demand. “There are not enough campsites and a lot of people, and they all try to book them at once,” she explains.

But if the problem is simple, the solution might not be. In fact, “[f]ixing this problem is more complicated than you might think, in part because the simple act of booking a campsite has become big business in Canada,” Fenton says. 

That’s because many national and provincial parks now choose to outsource their booking systems. And one company in particular has been dominating the Canadian market.

The US-based Camis has received contracts with several provinces and territories, as well as with the federal government. Combined, these contracts amount to millions of dollars.

Camis did not respond to requests for comments for Fenton’s piece.

The Walrus filed access to information requests and consulted federal government records to understand the scope of this company’s presence in Canada’s camping industry. Here are some of the findings:

• Parks Canada signed a contract worth over $70 million with Camis in July 2023, which is up for renewal in November 2029.

• BC Parks’ contract with Camis includes payments from every reservation the company processes, for an unknown total amount.

• Ontario’s contract with Camis is based on a profit-sharing model, with the company receiving just over 5 percent of revenue from reservations, cancellations, changes, camping fees, as well as a portion from retail sales.

Meanwhile, would-be campers across Canada are also seeing the costs of campsites increase. This year, for instance, BC parks more than doubled the costs of backcountry camping in some of its parks. And in many parks, reservation fees and cancellation fees have become customary.

According to Fenton, the lack of a Canadian competitor could be a factor that’s contributing to driving those prices up. “Because [Camis is] the only company that provides this service, they can charge whatever they want,” explains Robin Shaban, an economist and public policy expert focused on competition, market structure, and digital governance. 

Taryn Eyton, the guidebook author, is of two minds about the platform’s adoption by Canadian parks. 

On the one hand, she notes, the parks who contract with Camis have better reservation systems than those who don’t. On the other hand, she believes the solution to Canada’s “camping crunch” lies in building more trails and campsites, and wonders whether the funds that are spent on these private contractors could be better spent elsewhere.

“The reality is that these reservation platforms are expensive to design and manage,” Fenton writes, “and if governments can’t foot that bill, campers are left with a decision: use a service in which much of your fee is going to a private, US-based company or miss out once again on that summer dream.”

You can read Cameron Fenton’s full story on how Camis became “a kind of Ticketmaster for the Canadian outdoors.”