If you’ve struggled to find an open site for your RV, you know how difficult it can be. With dates in hand, you hit the internet. State park? Forest Service campground? National park campground? You hit each website, poke in the dates, and maybe you pray. Now a new startup company says you can use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to find campsites.
For now it only works in California, but they say they’ll also roll it out for other states. We took a test drive, and here’s what we found.
Use AI to find campsites? Use CampChimp
CampChimp, with a dubious “monkey wears Smokey Bear hat” logo, launched in May. The outfit asks you where in California you want to stay, your first night needed, and how many nights you want.
Then the AI part steps in. The “cute” screen tells you to hold onto your bananas while they look through the list.
Tying into reservation systems that serve both federal and state campgrounds, CampChimp soon returns with a list of campgrounds with open dates meeting your needs. You’ll get a picture of the facility, and from there you can click through directly to the reservation system for that camp. You make your own reservations—CampChimp simply steers you there.
We tried it out
We’re slated for a conference in Norco, California, next November, so we plugged in our information and waited to see what would happen. Sure enough, a picture-list of quite a number of campgrounds appeared. One was close—just a half-hour away. Others were a bit farther out-there. If we didn’t mind driving back from where we’d be coming more than an hour-and-a-half, we could book there.
OK, a reservation four months out is one thing. How about if we needed it for this weekend? That’s just two nights away. We changed the parameters and checked again. Fewer results this time. The closest park from our earlier search was still available, but many of the results were a long drive.
Norco isn’t exactly on most folks’ destination lists, so we said we’d like a spot near San Diego, this weekend. Yes, CampChimp AI found campsites. That is, if we didn’t mind driving two-and-a-half hours to the nearest one, or over three hours to another. But such is the nature of Southern California camping. AI saved us time in finding available campgrounds.
CampChimp AI drawbacks
What are the drawbacks if you use AI to find a campsite? With CampChimp, at this point you’re stuck with California sites. How soon will other states be online, and what states? CampChimp is vague on that score.
What does it cost? Well, the promo says you can check for free. True, you can use CampChimp’s system for a week for free. But you still have to fork over your credit card information, with the understanding that at the end of the week, you’ll automatically be signed up to hand over $4.95 a month. We’ll be checking our credit card statement since we’ll cancel our “free” subscription long before that free week has ended.
CampChimp is of no value if you’re looking for privately run RV parks. For that, just cruise on over to campspot.com. It’ll take your information and find you commercial RV parks with openings to meet your needs. And it won’t charge you a dime.
Already know where you want to stay, but can’t find an opening? Campnab.com will, for a fee, keep an eye on your desired location and if there’s a cancellation, send you word that, if you’re fast, you might grab a spot.
Use AI to find campsites? Maybe, if you favor the Golden State. For the rest of us, it’ll be something to watch and see if it does become practical for the balance of the country.
##RVT1168b
I just don’t like the name Camp Chimp. I don’t want anyone, especially an AI chimp monkeying around with my trip. The logo offers me no confidence at all.
Thank you, Russ amd Tina! 🙂 Did not know about Campspot; thank you! 🙂 CampChimp sound interesting, but we are several hundred miles removed from California. I guess I’ll monitor it. Maybe it will be useful to us in the future. Thanks again, have a great day, safe travels and safe stays! 🙂
Campspot is actually a reservation service used by a number of independent campgrounds.
Did the reservation for my current campsite using Campspot because that’s what the RV Park uses. Made the reservation in early April for site 41, which showed open. When I arrived, I was assigned site 66. When I got to that site it was occupied. So they moved me to site 64. Then, after I was all setup, they wanted me, next day, to pack it all up and put me in another site for my remaining three nights. Uh…NO! They finally got things shifted around so no moves were needed. BTW…site 41 appears to have a very long term camper in it, so why did it show open?
Campspot ONLY wants to maximize an RV park’s revenue…like Marcus Lemonis, customer sat is WAY down the list.
AI will be the demise of the human race if checks and balances are not implemented.
Campspot makes their money as a booking service hired by RV parks. Every booking we have had with Campspot has been fraught with lies of omission and undisclosed fees that only show up after our credit card is billed. They are single handedly ruining their own reputation and that of the Campgrounds they service.
Start-up blather using the AI buzzword. I’m not hearing any A.I. in the system, just sounds like a multi-site search engine. I plug in the dates I want and it returns the open campsites nearest to the location I selected. Recreation.gov and ReserveAmerica will do the same thing for those campgrounds they host. It is nice to be able to search multiple reservation sites with one click but not AI. Works just like Kayak for hotel reservations.