Gas Prices Increase Fees At Campgrounds
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SYRACUSE — Gasoline pump prices hit a new nationwide record this week, and that’s apparently good news for more than the oil companies.
Camping reservations at state parks in New York are up nearly 16% over last year, the commissioner of the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Carol Ash, said yesterday. As of early April, 52,186 reservations had been booked at state camping facilities. That’s up from 45,034 at the same time last year. In all, state parks recorded 186,021 advance and walk-up camping reservations in 2007.
“With gasoline prices soaring, state parks are an attractive and inexpensive option for people looking to get away without driving too far,” Ms. Ash said.
The department didn’t anticipate the surge.
“Obviously, we’re always trying to get the word out about the great local assets in New York state and encourage people to take full advantage of them, but we were surprised by this number,” a spokeswoman of the parks department, Eileen Larrabee, said. “Weather is always a factor. Maybe people are just planning more or earlier. Maybe last year they tried and got shut out, but we do believe it [the price of gas] is a factor.”
It may be too early in the year to call it a trend, but travel experts are not surprised.
“It makes sense to me,” a spokesman of AAA, the automobile association in Washington, D.C., Michael Pina, said. “We’ve never done any research on that, but stuff I’ve seen from travel associations show that camping is one of the least expensive outdoor activities that’s out there. And it’s very popular with families. They can have an outdoor experience without having to drive too far from home.”
ReserveAmerica is the largest provider of campsite reservations in North America, processing 4 million reservations a year at over 4,000 parks with more than 200,000 campsites and cabins. Last year, the company set a one-day record by booking roughly 67,000 camping nights and this year eclipsed that mark by 9,000. At its peak, the company’s reservation system was processing more than 250 reservations every minute on February 1.
Bookings for 2008 are up roughly 14% so far from a national standpoint, the company said.
