Updated
The short answer: the website answers "should I stay here?" and the booking platform answers "can I stay here, on these exact dates?" Anything a stranger needs in order to want your park goes on the website, readable without a date picker or an account. Anything that depends on live inventory goes in the platform. The rest of this guide is that rule applied page by page.
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Here is the test. Open the page you send guests to and try to read your pet policy, your site dimensions and this year's opening day without choosing a date. Whatever you cannot reach that way still exists somewhere: the pet policy in a booking confirmation, the dimensions in a reservation system that wants dates before it shows anything, the season dates on a Facebook post from March. Each one is written down. None of them is where a stranger is looking, so to the stranger it is missing, and a park with a missing pet policy is a park with no dogs allowed.
The companion piece covers why these are two different tools at all: do I need Campspot or RoverPass if I already have a website?
The rule of thumb
When you're unsure about a piece of information, ask whether somebody who has not yet chosen your park needs it. If yes, it goes on the website. If it only matters once they've picked dates, it goes in the platform. If both, it goes in both, and it has to match.
| What belongs where | Website | Booking platform |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Should I stay here? | Can I stay here, on these dates? |
| Sites | Dimensions, hookups, shade, clearance | Live availability by night |
| Money | Real rates, written out | Taxes, fees, deposits, refunds |
| Rules | Pets, quiet hours, fires, cancellation terms | Cancellation processing |
| Everything else | Photos, map, directions, what is nearby | Reservations, inventory, reporting |
The website is the part you own: the domain, the pages and every photo on them, in your business name. The reservation record lives in the platform. Before you sign or renew, read the contract for who owns the guest list and whether you can export it, because the guest relationship goes wherever that list goes.
Belongs on the website
A page for every site type and loop. Dimensions, hookups, surface, shade, slide-out clearance, whether a forty-foot rig can actually get in there. Guests want this before they'll pick dates. Open your own booking page and check whether it shows any of this ahead of the date picker; if it doesn't, the website is the only place a guest can read it.
Real rates, written out. A range is fine. Seasonal variation is fine. "Call for pricing" is not, because it reads as expensive and adds a phone call to a decision that was going fine without one.
Photos, captioned and organized by loop or unit. Forty unlabeled photos in one gallery teach a guest nothing. Six photos labeled "Cedar Loop, sites 20 to 34" teach them where they'll be sleeping. If the photos you have are old, how to photograph your campground covers the shot list and the two times of day worth shooting in.
The park map, readable on a phone. Zoomable, with the loops named the same way they're named everywhere else on the site.
Directions written by somebody who knows the road. Not just an embedded map. The turn people miss, the bridge with the clearance, whether the last two miles are gravel, which side the entrance is on. A guest who arrives calm after dark is a guest who read this page.
Rules and policies in full. Pets, quiet hours, campfires, visitors, generators, rig age limits, cancellation terms. Put them where somebody can read them before booking rather than discovering them in a confirmation email. You want the mismatch found early, while it's still a polite "no thanks" instead of a refund.
Amenities as facts. Bathhouse count, laundry, dump station, potable water, playground, pool with its real open dates, wifi with its real coverage.
Season dates and current conditions. Opening day, closing day, and the notices that change: burn bans, water shutoffs, road work, high water. Date every notice, so a guest can tell a live warning from a stale one. The rest of the pre-opening work is in the campground website checklist before the season opens.
Who you are. The family, the history, how long you've had the place. Small, but it's the difference between a lot and a park.
What's nearby. The town, the lake, the trailhead, the grocery store, the good breakfast place. A guest planning a week wants to know there's a place for propane and a place for pancakes, and you already know both.
Belongs in the booking platform
Live availability. Which specific sites are open on which nights. This changes hourly and should exist in exactly one place.
The reservation itself. Dates, site assignment, guest details, payment, deposit, confirmation.
Money handling. Taxes, fees, refunds, cancellation processing, the audit trail.
Inventory management. Blocking sites for maintenance, holding sites, moving a booking, the things your staff do on a Tuesday.
Reporting. Occupancy, revenue, source of booking, the end-of-season numbers.
If you're doing any of these by hand across a spreadsheet and a phone, that's the signal you need a platform rather than more website.
The four things that must live in both, and match
This is where parks lose money quietly. Each of the four has a place you change first and a place you check afterwards.
| Item | Change it here first | Then check here | What a mismatch costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rates | The platform, because that's where the card is charged | The rates page on the website, same day | A booking that starts with an argument |
| Policies | The platform's cancellation and deposit settings | The policies page, word for word | Eating the difference on a refund |
| Season dates | Whichever you open first, then the other the same weekend | Both, plus the home page | Bookings for nights you're closed |
| Site type names | The platform, renamed to match the website | Every page that links to booking | Photos the guest can't connect to a site |
Rates. A rate on your website that doesn't match the platform's checkout is the fastest way to start a booking with an argument. Pick one source of truth, and update both the same afternoon.
Policies. The cancellation window on your website and the one enforced at checkout must be the same window. If they're not, you will eventually eat the difference.
Season dates. Every year, on the same weekend you change one, change the other.
Site type names. If your website calls it "Cedar Loop" and the platform calls it "Section C," the guest cannot connect the photos they liked to the site they're booking, and all your photo work is wasted. Rename the platform to match the website, not the other way around. The website is where the language should be human.
The handoff
The moment a guest goes from your website to your booking platform sits between two systems, so it's easy for neither one to own it. That's where the drop happens.
Put the booking button in the same place on every page, so nobody hunts for it. Have it say what it does, "check availability" rather than "click here." If a specific site type page sends somebody to booking, send them to that site type rather than the front door of the whole system. And write your own check-in and arrival information on the website, so the confirmation email isn't the first time a guest learns what time the gate closes.
Doing the audit yourself
Open a private browser window and pretend you have never heard of your park. Time yourself. Try to find, in this order:
- What a site costs, as a number
- Whether your rig fits, with a length
- Whether dogs are allowed
- When you're open this year
- How to get there, from the last highway exit
Anything you can't find in ninety seconds is either missing or living in the wrong system. That list is your website brief, and you just wrote it for free.
If the list is short, a Starter build at $2,800 covers it. If you've got several site types or unit types that each need their own page and gallery, that's Grow at $4,500. If you're running memberships or seasonal contracts with an application flow behind them, that's Complete at $7,500.
Email the list to hello@campgroundwebdesigner.com. Its length decides the size of the build, and I would rather say "Starter" to a short list than sell Complete to a park that needs five pages.
Common questions
Can the booking platform's page do the website's job instead?
It can hold the reservation. What it cannot do is show a stranger the bathhouse, the loop map or the drive in before they have picked dates, and that is the moment a park gets chosen or skipped. Let the platform page be the till and put the selling on pages in your own name.
What if the platform won't let me rename Section C to Cedar Loop?
Put both names on the website: "Cedar Loop (Section C in the booking system)" on the site type page, the map and the photo captions. The guest then carries the platform's name with them when they click through.
Do I need a page for every individual site?
No. One page per site type or loop is the unit that helps a guest choose. Individual sites are the platform's job, unless two sites in the same loop are genuinely different, like waterfront against interior.
How do I stop the rates drifting apart again?
Give the job to one person, change the platform first, then the website the same day, and put a "rates current as of" date on the website's rates page. The date tells you when it was last checked against checkout.
Where do burn bans and water shutoffs go?
One dated line near the top of the home page, and if your platform has a notice field at checkout, the same line there. Remove it the day it lifts, so the notice never outlives the ban.
When should I redo the ninety-second audit?
Once before opening day, and again after any change to rates, policies or season dates, since those are the four things that drift. It takes less time than reading this guide did.
Canadian? The same three sizes in Canadian dollars are on the CAD pricing page.