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May 17, 2024
Haley Dalian
Learn how grid optimization helps your campground maximize bookings, overall revenue, and all around user satisfaction.
A campground’s reservation grid is the backbone of its book of business. Before online reservation software was as commonplace as it is today, a physical paper or bulletin-board grid was the surefire tool to track and rearrange all campground bookings.
Fast forward, we’ve taken the oldest trick of the trade and amplified its revenue-generating potential for Campspot customers—$8.9 million in 2023 revenue from grid optimization alone!
Learn about grid optimization and how it integrates with many of Campspot’s other software features to maximize bookings, overall revenue, and all around user satisfaction.
Filling up a standard reservation grid is a simple matter of time, ranging from the first available to the last available spot in a park. Operators may even allow repeat guests and early bookers to claim a specific site at their property as an advanced booking or loyalty incentive. Traditionally, this is a very static process and way of viewing one’s reservation grid.
Grid optimization through Campspot removes the rails and restrictions from your typical reservation grid. When enabled, our software will efficiently identify reservations that can be shuffled in order to create openings for new potential bookings, without staff oversight.
We like to think of this feature as the most complex game of Tetris you’ll never have to play, because the entire process is intelligently automated for you! Our grid optimization functions unlike any of our competitors’ by updating in real time as guests search for availability. Our business rules engine mimics a real reservationist by making exceptions to rules to minimize gaps on the grid and prioritize revenue over rules.
Even if you love Tetris, we promise Campspot’s grid optimization is a major time saver and revenue gamechanger.
If you have an inflexible grid, then you are stuck with the exact same rigid bookings from the day they were purchased. Regardless of how far out the bookings were made or where they’re at in your property, you will already face limited options and awkward site night gaps you cannot easily fill. The thought of attempting to manage this manually also leads to an unnecessary headache.
Grid optimization is able to see past this singular grid option and instead devise the best possible grid for your bottom line. Where sites can be moved based on certain criteria (detailed below), new windows are opened and able to be filled with incoming, best-fit reservations. Ultimately, this means fewer unfillable gaps and therefore more flexibility to squeeze in the maximum amount of reservations—and revenue—for your property.
Aside from revenue potential, there are four important considerations that the software keeps in mind when deciding whether or not a particular site can be shuffled within your grid.
Grid optimization takes place from the point of booking up until 72 hours or three days ahead of a reservation check-in date. If it’s any closer to arrival, the booked site will no longer be moved.
As a new reservation is being made, Campspot can intelligently identify reservations that can be moved in order to create an opening for a new potential booking, without relying on you or your staff to play a game of tetris to figure that out. Software admins can also see if a site was optimized (and when) by referencing the Reservation History section of each Reservation Summary.
When a camper chooses to lock their site through Campspot’s innovative feature (usually by paying an extra fee at checkout), this reservation is no longer eligible to be shuffled through grid optimization like the others. That camper has already paid you to guarantee their exact site upon arrival.
Lock Site is an excellent ancillary income generator and highly desired option among campers. Though it has its trade-offs with grid optimization, the combination of these two features means your revenue pathways are firing on all cylinders.
The intelligence of grid optimization will continue to work around your small proportion of locked sites—we recommend no more than 50%—while Lock Site revenue will passively accumulate at the same time.
As mentioned, optimization works automatically and behind the scenes to make your reservation grid as efficient as possible. However, if there are specific sites or site types that you wish to exclude from optimization, you can create a rule for this within the software. Furthermore, this rule can also be used to turn optimization off for the entire campground.
Grid optimization lies at the heart of Campspot’s reservation management software. Try out grid optimization today among Campspot’s suite of powerful, revenue-generating capabilities.
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Haley Dalian is a lifelong Michigander who takes advantage of recreation throughout the state’s changing seasons—from snow skiing to scuba diving in the Great Lakes. A former Campspot marketing manager, Haley holds a B.A. degree in public policy from Michigan State University and an M.S. degree in sustainability from the University of Michigan. She is passionate about environmental stewardship, exploring the outdoors, and has never met a potato she didn’t like.
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