Interested in booking a campsite in Alberta’s mountains? Parks Canada has some tips

Jasper National Park alone has seen demand for campsite reservations increase from 1,800 in 2015 to 22,000 this year. Parks Canada has some tips as bookings open up.

Parks Canada has begun opening up bookings for national parks in Alberta using its updated online reservation system.

“The updated platform that we’re running with functioned very well and as expected,” said Pamela Clark, who runs visitor experience for Jasper National Park. “The queuing, the site selection and the payment process operated very smoothly, even with the increased volumes that we experienced.”

Demand for campsites continues to increase and has been going up significantly for the last three or four years.

“When we launched (the Parks Canada online reservation system) back in 2015, we had about 1,800 reservations on launch day,” Clark said of Jasper. “Now, fast-forward to 2023, we’re over 20,000 reservations on launch day.

“People know we have a reservation system. They understand it’s the best way of ensuring that they have a site that meets their needs,” she said.

“What we’ve seen in the last four or five years, when it really started to pick up in 2019 and 2020 — even the use of our national parks — is people are gravitating towards the outdoor opportunities and just the natural escapes.”

For Jasper National Park, reservations for front-country (serviced) sites launched March 16. Bookings for back-country sites launched March 20.

“When users logged in at 8 a.m. last Thursday morning, there were about over 22,000 people in our waiting room but we were able to manage those volumes, and the average wait time was about 30 minutes,” Clark said.