It's May. School holidays are done, midweek bookings have dried up, and you've got maybe a quarter of your sites occupied on any given night.
Then you check your booking software invoice. Still $300. Same as it was in December when you were turning people away.
That's the frustrating bit about subscription-based booking systems - you're paying the same amount whether you're packed or practically empty.
The Problem With Paying a Flat Fee
Most campground booking systems charge you a fixed monthly amount. Seems straightforward enough, right? Pay your $200 or $300 or whatever, use the software, done.
Except campgrounds don't work that way. You've got your mad rush periods - Christmas holidays, Easter, long weekends - when you're flat out. Then you've got the quiet stretches where you're lucky to get a handful of bookings per week.
The subscription model doesn't care about any of that. You pay the same in July when you're rammed as you do in May when you've got tumbleweeds rolling through.
Paying Full Price When You're Half Empty
Think about it this way: during your slowest month, you might only process 20 or 30 bookings. But you're still paying for software built to handle 200 bookings if you need it.
It's like paying for a massive internet plan when you're only using a fraction of the data. Sure, the capacity is there if you need it, but most of the time you're just subsidising infrastructure you're not using.
That mismatch gets pretty annoying when you're already watching every dollar during the quiet season.
Why Software Companies Love Subscriptions
For the companies selling booking software, subscriptions are brilliant. Predictable revenue every single month, whether you use their platform heavily or barely at all. They can budget, forecast, sleep easy at night.
For you? Not so much. When bookings drop off, that fixed monthly fee starts to sting a bit more, because it's not adjusting to your reality.
What If You Only Paid for What You Actually Use?
Usage-based pricing works differently. Instead of a flat monthly fee, you pay a small percentage of each invoice that gets paid. More bookings, higher cost. Fewer bookings, lower cost.
It's pretty straightforward:
Quiet month? Maybe you only pay $50 or $80 because you didn't have many bookings.
Busy month? You might pay $400, but you're also bringing in way more revenue to cover it.
All year? Your costs actually track with how your business performs instead of fighting against it.
Let's Put Some Numbers on It
Say you're currently paying $300/month for a subscription system. That's $3,600 a year, no matter what.
Now imagine a usage-based model where you pay a small percentage per booking. During your three slowest months, you might only pay $60-80 each month because bookings are thin. That's a few hundred dollars saved right when you need it most.
Sure, during peak season you might pay more than $300 in a month. But that's also when you're actually making money and can afford it. The cost rises and falls with your revenue instead of staying stubbornly flat.
Why Most Parks Haven't Made the Switch
Honestly? Because subscriptions have been the default for so long that nobody questions them anymore. You sign up, set up the direct debit, and just... keep paying every month like clockwork.
Plus, until recently, there weren't many options. If you wanted a decent booking system for campgrounds, you took what was available and accepted the subscription model. Most parks are still on those old subscription systems, just accepting it as the cost of doing business.
But the maths don't work for seasonal businesses. And more platforms are finally waking up to that.
It Shouldn't Be This Way
Slow periods are hard enough without your software costs working against you. You're already dealing with lower revenue - why should your booking system cost the same as when you're fully booked?
If your current system charges a flat fee every month regardless of activity, it's time to ask whether that's really the best you can do. There are better options out there that actually align with how your business works.
