Should an alert service book the campsite for you?

Disclosure: OpenCampsite publishes this guide. Its own service is notification-only and does not book for anyone, so it has an interest in how this question is framed. No other service is named.

Most campsite alerts stop at the message. A few services go one step further and offer to complete the reservation, so that a site opening while you are asleep or in a meeting is booked before you see anything.

That solves a real problem. It also changes what you are trusting the service with. This page sets out both sides so the choice is deliberate.

What you are handing over

To book in your name, a service needs to act as you on the reservation site. In practice that means your account email and password, stored by the service.

With those, the holder can:

• see your name, address, phone number and booking history,
• make a reservation and pay with the card saved on the account,
• change or cancel reservations you already hold.

A notification-only alert needs none of this. It needs a campground, your dates and a way to reach you.

What can go wrong

The wrong site gets booked. Your alert said any site for those dates. The one that opened is a walk-in tent pad and you are towing a trailer. A person reading the alert would have skipped it. An automatic booking may not.

Fixing it costs money. Reservation fees and penalties apply to a booking made on your behalf exactly as they would to one you made. On Recreation.gov, the online reservation fee is $8 and is non-refundable, cancelling costs a $10 service fee, and cancelling an individual campsite the day before or the day of arrival also forfeits the first night's fee. Other reservation systems set their own amounts.

Two bookings land at once. If you run alerts for overlapping dates at several campgrounds, more than one may fire. You then hold reservations you must cancel, each with its fee.

The password is exposed. Any company that stores passwords can lose them. If you used the same password elsewhere, the damage spreads to those accounts.

The reservation site's terms may not allow it. Reservation sites publish terms of use. Before you share a login, read what yours says about sharing an account or letting someone else book through it.

Questions to ask before you agree

1. Who or what does the booking? Staff, software, or both?
2. How is my password stored, and who can read it? Look for a specific answer on the service's own pages.
3. What exactly will be booked? Can you restrict it to named sites, a site type or an equipment length?
4. Is there a spending limit? A maximum nightly price or total.
5. What happens after a wrong booking? Who pays the cancellation fee?
6. Can I revoke access at once? Changing your password should end it. Confirm nothing else is needed.
7. What do the reservation site's terms say? This is the one question the alert service cannot answer for you.

If the service's pages do not answer the second and fifth questions, that is an answer.

If you go ahead

Reduce what a leaked password could do.

• Use a password that exists nowhere else. The Federal Trade Commission's account-security advice is to make passwords long, at least 12 characters. It adds that when a password is stolen, you must also change it on every other service where you used it, which is the argument for never reusing one.
• Protect your email account separately. The same guidance points out that password reset links go to your inbox, so whoever controls your email can take over other accounts.
• Narrow the alert. Name the sites or site types you would accept, so an automatic booking cannot pick something unusable.
• Avoid overlapping automatic bookings. Run one at a time, or keep the others notification-only.
• Change the password after the trip. That ends the access whatever the service does.

Ways to respond without sharing a login

Auto-booking is one answer to "I cannot react in time". There are others that cost nothing and share nothing.

• Pick a channel that interrupts you. Text or push with sound on, not email.
• Share the alert. Add a second phone number or email if the service allows it, or forward alerts to someone in your group who is free during the day.
• Prepare the reservation account. Stay signed in on your phone and keep the saved card current, so booking takes under a minute.

Where this guide's publisher stands

OpenCampsite does not book, hold or buy campsites and does not ask for a reservation login. That is a design choice with a cost: if you cannot respond to a message, it cannot act for you. Whether that trade suits you depends on how reachable you are, and this page is meant to help you decide either way.