Ballots: The Fairest Way to Sell Your Busiest Weekends

Easter, Christmas and New Year, the January long weekend, the September school holidays - your best dates every year sell out in minutes. The moment bookings open, whoever has the fastest fingers and the most reliable internet wins, and everyone else is left refreshing an empty calendar.

First-in-first-served turns your busiest morning into a race. It rewards whoever happens to be at their screen at 9am sharp, quietly passes over the regulars who have stayed with you for years, and sends a wave of disappointed callers to your front desk who missed out by seconds. Running the allocation by hand instead - a spreadsheet, a call list, names in a hat - is hours of admin, and it is hard to defend the moment someone questions how the decision was made.

Ballots give you another way to fill those dates: a fair, random draw that runs itself.

How a ballot works

Instead of opening your peak dates for immediate booking, you open them for entry. Guests register their interest for free, and when registration closes, Camper BMS draws the entries in a random order. Winners are invited to book in controlled waves, each with a set amount of time to claim their spot. If someone books, declines, or lets their invitation lapse, the offer rolls straight to the next person in line. When there is nothing left to hand out, the ballot finishes on its own and any unclaimed nights reopen for normal booking.

Everyone hears back either way, and no single guest's outcome comes down to how fast they can click.

What your guests see

For guests, a ballot feels like a calmer version of your normal booking flow.

• Ballot dates are marked on the booking calendar in orange with a "B", so it is clear at a glance which nights are allocated by draw rather than sold directly.
• Selecting dates in that period turns the usual book button into an orange "Available via ballot" button. One click takes them to the entry page, with their dates and party size already carried across.
• Entry is free and designed to take under a minute: name, email, party size, and optional preferred dates. It is one entry per email address, and entering twice does not improve anyone's odds.
• If they are drawn, they get an email invitation with a "Choose Dates & Book" button and the exact date, time, and timezone their invitation is held until.
• They pick any available dates within the period and pay through your normal checkout. Anyone who misses out is told, so nobody is left wondering.

Ballot dates show up right inside your booking widget, alongside everything else you take bookings for. If you would rather keep entry on your own website, you can embed a dedicated ballot widget too - the same copy-and-paste embed code you use for the rest of Camper BMS.

What you do: publish it and let it run

On your side, a ballot is close to set-and-forget.

1. Create the ballot: give it a name, choose the stay period and the areas it covers, and set when registration opens and closes.
2. Publish it. The covered dates are immediately protected from direct booking, so nobody can grab them around the draw.
3. Draw with a single click when registration closes, or switch on auto-draw and it runs itself, within about 15 minutes of closing.
4. Let it run. Invitations go out in waves, expire on schedule, and roll to the next entrant whenever someone books, declines, or lets an invitation lapse - around the clock.
5. When there is nothing left to allocate, the ballot completes itself and any leftover nights go back on public sale automatically.

Registration even sets its own status. It shows as Upcoming, Open, or Closed based on the dates you choose, so there is nothing for your team to flip on or off by hand.

Built to be fair, and to prove it

A ballot is only worth running if you can stand behind the result. Every entry is given a permanent draw position the moment the draw happens, and you can export the full order to CSV. If a guest ever asks how they went, you have a recorded, defensible answer rather than a story about a spreadsheet.

Every ballot also keeps a clear record of what each entrant agreed to. Your own promoter details and the specifics of the ballot fill into a built-in terms template, and each entrant accepts a versioned snapshot of those terms that is timestamped against their entry. If you update the terms between one ballot and the next, each entry stays tied to the exact version that was in front of that entrant when they entered.

Controls that keep it under control

A few settings keep a popular period from turning into a scramble:

• Invitation waves - decide how many invitations are live at once, so a 20-site period is never promised to 200 people at the same time.
• Timed holds - give each winner a set number of hours to book. When an invitation lapses, it passes to the next in line on its own.
• Quota control - cap how many sites each winner can book, set to one by default.
• Self-service declines - a winner who cannot make it can pass their spot along straight from the invitation email, which moves the queue along faster.
• Full entrant management - live entry counts, search and filter, the ability to remove an entry or re-send an invitation, and CSV export whenever you need it.

Every step is emailed for you

From a guest's first tap to the final result, each stage is emailed automatically: a confirmation when they enter, an invitation with an exact deadline if they are drawn, and a courteous note if they are not selected. You are not left sending updates by hand, and guests are not left guessing where they stand.

No dead inventory at the end

The risk with any allocation is that a few spots quietly go unclaimed and sit empty over your best weekend. A ballot closes that gap. When it wraps up, remaining entrants are emailed to let them know, and any nights that were not claimed automatically return to public sale - so late-deciding guests can still book them the usual way.

A familiar, fair way to hand out scarce spots

There is nothing experimental about running a ballot for something in high demand. A random draw is a long-established, widely understood way to share out a limited number of sought-after spots fairly, and it is exactly the kind of allocation your peak periods call for. Ballots bring that approach to your park or campground, without the spreadsheets, the draw days, or the manual call lists behind it.

Common questions

Is the draw actually random?

Yes. When you run the draw, every entry is assigned a permanent, random draw position, and you can export the full order to CSV. The result is recorded rather than reconstructed after the fact, so it is straightforward to stand behind if anyone asks how they went.

Do guests pay anything to enter?

No. Entry is free and is designed to take under a minute. Payment only happens at the very end, when a drawn guest chooses their dates and checks out the same way any other booking would.

What stops the same dates being promised to everyone at once?

Invitation waves. You decide how many invitations are live at a time, and each winner has a timed hold to book. As invitations are claimed or lapse, the next entrants are invited, so the number of live offers always matches what you actually have left to give.

What happens to nights nobody claims?

When the ballot completes, any unclaimed nights automatically go back on public sale, and remaining entrants are emailed to let them know the ballot has finished. Nothing is left sitting empty by accident.

Do I have to run the draw myself?

You can draw with a single click when registration closes, or turn on auto-draw and let it run on its own, within about 15 minutes of the close time. Registration opens and closes on the schedule you choose, with no manual switching in between.