Private firm cashes in on public campsites

MADISON – In the eyes of Chad Klotz, many of Wisconsin's state parks offer beautiful environs for camping, but he's not likely to visit one any time soon.

"I have not camped at a state park since I was a young child," said Klotz, 36, of Dodge County.

A major reason for that: Money.

Klotz is president of the Wisconsin Campers Association, a nonprofit organization that works to promote family camping. He said members of his group typically prefers to camp at county parks and private campgrounds because they tend to be less expensive than state recreation areas.

Base camping rates at state parks, which increased on Tuesday, and the cost of vehicle-admission stickers, make camping in those facilities too expensive for him and a lot of his peers, he said.

It's not just those fees that campers must pay to stay in state recreation areas. A reservation fee that is assessed in virtually every transaction involving a state campground reservation also is tacked on to the cost. Most of the revenue generated from that fee goes to a private contractor, which collects more than $1 million every year from residents and tourists, Gannett Wisconsin Media has found.

The company, ReserveAmerica, has been paid an estimated $16.4 million since 1999, when it first entered a contract with the state Department of Natural Resources to manage online and phone reservations for state camping sites, according to data released by the DNR.

Of the $9.70 reservation fee, the DNR keeps $1 and the rest goes to ReserveAmerica.

Not only has that fee increased since 1999, when it started at $8.50, but also Wisconsin campers are paying a higher online reservation fee than campers in surrounding states for almost identical services. Iowa and Illinois also use the ReserveAmerica system; Iowa charges $4 for online reservations while Illinois charges $5 per reservation. In Michigan and Minnesota, which do not use ReserveAmerica, online reservation fees are $8 and $8.50 respectively. Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota also offer phone reservations, but at rates higher than online booking that range between $6 and $10.

DNR spokesperson Bill Cosh said he could not comment about why Wisconsin's reservation fee is more expensive than surrounding states, telling Gannett Wisconsin Media that each state has its own policies and laws governing camping fees.

But Klotz, who was surprised to learn of the reservation fee, questioned whether it is needed — particularly when other camping fees are increasing and the state parks are in such dire financial straits that some lawmakers are considering selling naming rights to the parks .

"Just to make the transaction, to pay $9, that's absurd," Klotz said. "That's nuts."

ReserveAmerica and its parent company, Texas-based Active Network, declined to comment for this story.

DNR: Contract is a good deal

Current and former DNR officials say ReserveAmerica's services are a vast improvement from how reservations used to be handled. Before the state began contracting with the company in 1999, the DNR manually administered its own camping reservation system. It was difficult to operate, and the agency would get tens of thousands of letters with reservations that had to be reviewed by hand, said George Meyer, a former DNR secretary.

"That took up a lot of staff time," said Meyer, now executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation.

In 1999, the Legislature amended state law to allow the DNR to contract for the job of operating a campground reservation system, and required that reservation fees be "sufficient to equal the estimated cost of administering the system."

The DNR has on three occasions since 1999 asked contractors to bid for the chance to operate the reservation system, according to Cosh, who said those requests fully complied with state procurement requirements.

Multiple national vendors responded and ReserveAmerica won the contract each time, Cosh said.

"In 2014, there were over 140,000 advance reservations for campsites made within the system and Reserve America has consistently shown the capability to provide this service to our customers and meet this demand," he said.

Customers far prefer making reservations via the Internet than by phone, according to the most recent proposal ReserveAmerica submitted to the DNR, in 2011. In that proposal, the latest data showed just 20 percent of reservations were made by phone, with the remaining 80 percent through the Internet.

ReserveAmerica's current contract with the DNR runs through Nov. 30.

An outdated site

Despite the amount of money paid to ReserveAmerica, it may be a good deal to campers and taxpayers, according to Clay Hess, who owns a web development firm in central Wisconsin and teaches information technology at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau. He has worked in information technology since 1997.

The DNR, Hess said, likely would be unable to provide the same reservation services on its own for a lower price, and the cost to provide those services has not necessarily decreased since 1999, when the state first contracted ReserveAmerica.

But technology has advanced and become far more sophisticated over that time, and Hess said ReserveAmerica's website has not kept pace with those developments. The coding is old and the navigation is cumbersome, he said. The site is also designed for older monitors, and that's a problem, according to Hess: 2015 is the first year when more web users will view sites on mobile devices than on desktops and laptops.

While the site is functional, he said, "it could be so much more."

"What concerns me about this site is that it does not appear to have been updated to reflect the advancements in new technologies," Hess said.

Fees cause concern

Since 1999, when ReserveAmerica began handling reservations, the DNR has generated about $103 million in camping charges — revenue from assessing the nightly rate of each campsite — and about $3 million from its $1 share of the transactional reservation fee. The agency uses that money to fund state parks and forests.

Under the increase in camping charges that took effect Tuesday, nightly camping rates for residents will increase between $3 and $6, while rates for non-residents will increase between $6 and $9. The per-night charge for electrical service will also increase from $5 to $10. Reservations made prior to Tuesday will not be affected by the rate increase, but any extensions or changes to existing reservations will result in charges at the new rates.

Those increases were prompted because the 2015-2017 state budget cut taxpayer funding for state parks and recreation areas. Park admission fees and trail passes will also see price increases because of the budget, but those changes will not take effect until next year. Officials are also considering other ways to generate revenue, including the possibility of selling naming rights and offering corporate sponsorships at parks.

Meyer, the former DNR secretary, said he is concerned about those fee hikes. He recalled a similar fee increase in the 1990s in which attendance numbers dropped the following year, particularly from out-of-state residents.

Indeed, at least for Klotz and his family, the fee increases are simply another reason not to visit state parks.

"To be honest with you, it would probably keep us away even more," he said.

Jonathan Anderson can be reached at janderson9@gannett.com or 715-384-3131, ext. 328. Find him on Twitter as @jonathanderson.