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The Ticketmaster of Camping: A US Company Is Raking In Millions in Fees

Long queues. Rising prices. What’s a hike worth in a Canadian park?

It’s a cold January morning. The sky outside my window is dark. A steaming mug of coffee sits on my desk. My phone is rigged with a set of alarms: 6:50, 6:55, 6:59. It’s a kind of countdown, a cascade of reminders to make sure I’m ready the moment reservations for Banff National Park open for the year. I’m already logged in to my Parks Canada account. I have the trail reservation primed and ready. I rehearse the series of clicks I’ll need to make to lock in summer plans. I tell myself this year will be different. This year, I’ll be fast enough.

Camis Inc., a US-based tech company, is contracted with six provinces, two territories, and the national system to operate campground booking systems

In July, Parks Canada signed a contract with Camis Inc. (up for renewal in 2029) worth just over $70 million

In recent years, campsite costs have increased, in part because Camis has no Canadian counterparts to drive price competition and maintain affordability

The final alarm rings, and I watch the clock tick over to the top of the hour. I click. I’m dropped into a digital queue: number 9,543 in the line. My heart sinks.

It’s been a few years since I wrestled with Parks Canada’s reservation system, but the memory is clear as ever. The preparation, the hope, and then the crushing disappointment that gives way to frustration. And I’m not the only one who’s felt it. Every year, when camping and hiking reservation windows open in national, provincial, and territorial parks across the country, news outlets and social media pages fill up with laments for crushed vacation plans, people casting about for sources of blame: bots that are faster than humans or resale companies buying up all the sites.

These are more convenient scapegoats than real explanations for Canada’s camping crunch. The problem, guidebook author Taryn Eyton explains, is supply and demand. “There are not enough campsites and a lot of people, and they all try to book them at once,” she says.

Fixing 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.

Many of those frustrating queues and booking systems are operated not by the parks themselves but by a tech company called Camis Inc., run out of offices in Michigan and Wisconsin. In addition to its national contract to operate Parks Canada’s reservation system, it has contracts with six provinces and two territories: Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories.

By dominating the Canadian market, pushing out competitors, and making extra reservation fees customary, Camis has become a kind of Ticketmaster for the Canadian outdoors. And like Ticketmaster, the company makes millions from every campsite or hike reservation we book.

Two hours north of Toronto, Craigleith Provincial Park sits nestled along the placid southern shores of Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. The park’s rocky shoreline draws thousands of visitors every summer to hike, swim, fish, and paddle. It’s also where Camis got its start.

According to its website, Douglas Hall founded Camis in 1979. The company, then called Bluewater Parklands, provided reservation, retail, and permit services to Craigleith Provincial Park. It rebranded as Camis in 1987 as it expanded its operations to two more Ontario parks, Point Farms and Sauble Falls. By 1998, it had grown even further, with contracts with dozens of individual parks.

Over the next twenty years, Camis grew into a national, and then international, juggernaut. In 2022, it was bought by Banyan Software, an Atlanta, Georgia–based holding company known for acquiring and growing niche technology companies. Today, Camis operates as an independent subsidiary, managing reservation systems for more than thirty North American park systems.

Reservation systems have become the backbone of Canada’s provincial and national parks, especially as more and more campsite and trail reservations have moved from a first-come-first-served model to one requiring advance booking. These systems operate differently across the country but share some basic similarities. Typically, bookings open in a set window. In British Columbia, it’s three months before the date you’re trying to book; in Ontario, it’s five months. Parks Canada opens bookings for the year in January and February, but the exact dates vary by park. And it’s not just drive-in campsites, often called frontcountry, that book this way. Many backcountry reservations, the campsites you have to hike or paddle to, also require advance booking. So do many park services, like trailhead shuttles or backcountry cabins. Some of the most coveted even use lottery systems to determine who receives a permit.

Among Camis’ many clients is BC Parks, Canada’s largest provincial park system. A representative for the province’s Ministry of Environment and Parks said in a statement to The Walrus that “BC Parks has contracted Camis Inc. to deliver camping reservations services since 2022” but declined to comment further, stating that “as a matter of practice, BC Parks does not comment on ongoing contractual relationships.”

Camis did not respond to requests for comment. But released under a Freedom of Information Act request, the company’s contract with BC Parks details a $200,000 payment to Camis “for configuring and deploying the BC Parks Camping Reservation Service.” The contract also includes payments from every reservation the company processes, but the total amount was redacted under section 21 of British Columbia’s Freedom of Information law, a provision that protects disclosures considered “harmful to business interests of a........

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