Industry
Camping in 2026 still runs on phone calls
Travellers plan whole trips with an AI assistant, then ring the caravan park to ask if a powered site is free. Why so much camping is still booked by phone, and what that costs parks.
· 5 min read
A family heading up the coast these school holidays will sort most of the trip on a phone screen. They compare fuel stops and ask an AI assistant which parks near Byron take dogs. Then they get to the part that matters, a powered site for four nights, and the park’s website says to call the office.
So they call. At 8pm nobody answers. At 10am on a changeover day the line is busy, because the manager is at the boom gate helping a 7-metre van back into a slot built for something smaller. The family moves on to the next park on the list.
Why so many parks still book by phone
Owners have reasons. Plenty of small parks run on a paper diary or a spreadsheet the owner trusts, and a phone call lets them do what a booking form usually can’t: put the couple with the big rig on the drive-through site, or hold site 12 for the family who has come every Easter since 2011.
Some of it is trust. An owner who once had an online system double-book a long weekend went back to the diary and stayed there. Some of it is money. Listing on a travel marketplace means handing over a share of every night, so the phone becomes the direct channel by default.
What the phone costs you
Calls bunch up at the worst moments: school holiday mornings and the Friday before a long weekend, when arrivals are already queuing at the office. Most of them ask the same things. Is there power, and how many amps? What does a night cost for two adults and two kids? Can we check in after six? Whoever answers is usually the same person meant to be cleaning the amenities block.
Then there is the call you never hear about. A guest who gets voicemail at night rarely leaves a message. They book the park that let them pick dates and pay.
AI search reads your website, not your phone line
This is the part that changed this year. More travellers start with an AI assistant, and before it answers, the assistant searches official websites for this year’s prices.
Apply that to a caravan park. Someone asks for a dog-friendly park near Mudgee with powered sites. The assistant checks each park’s own website for current rates before it suggests one.
If your website says “phone for rates”, the assistant has nothing to quote. It recommends a park that publishes its prices, or leans on a directory listing that is two seasons out of date.
Write down what people ring to ask
You don’t have to give up the phone to fix this. Start by publishing the answers your callers want, on your own website:
- Nightly rates for each site type in 2026, peak and off-peak
- Power and amps, water, drive-through access and the longest van a site fits
- Pet rules, check-in and check-out times, and what to do if you arrive after the office shuts
- Cancellation terms in plain words
Put it on the page as ordinary text. A PDF price list or a photo of the office noticeboard is hard to read on a phone, and a search engine can’t quote a photo.
Let guests check the dates themselves
The question behind most calls is whether a site is free on certain dates. A page that shows live availability answers that at 8pm with nobody picking up.
That is the problem we work on at Spacecamps. Each park gets a booking page on its own spacecamps.com.au address, where guests see the sites, prices and open dates, then book and pay. The page is built to load on one bar of signal, which matters when the guest is checking from a highway rest stop. You pay a flat monthly fee and we take no commission on stays (Stripe still charges its card fee).
Your phone will keep ringing. Regulars like a chat, and some questions need a person. You just spend less of the morning reading out prices.
See your sites as guests would
Set up your park and booking page on a free trial.