Parks Canada had a problem with its online reservation system for Lake O'Hara this year, leading to overbooking of visitors that pushed numbers for this famed area of Yoho National Park past its quota.
Parks Canada had a problem with its online reservation system for Lake O'Hara this year, leading to overbooking of visitors that pushed numbers for this famed area of Yoho National Park past its quota.
The area has a quota of about 240 people a day to reduce ecological concerns and give visitors a wilderness experience. A 7 a.m. bus is now running in addition to the 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 buses to accommodate overbookings that occurred due to a computer glitch.
“On about half the days buses are operating, we're overbooked by four per cent, so practically that means 10 people,” said Michael St. Denis, visitor experience manager for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay. “It's put us over our quota on those days.”
Parks Canada started offering an online booking system last year through a third party reservation service known as Camis.
“Just prior to the launch of the reservation service they had done an update to the system and had overlooked a small glitch, which led to the overbooking,” said Robert Loken, Parks Canada's manager for national operations and sales.
“On the very first day, it was caught within 20 minutes. By then, the season was full and the overbookings had occurred.”
Yoho National Park worked with its Parks Canada national office and the reservation service provider to try to resolve the overbooking problem - and decided to run an additional morning bus on the days too many people were booked.
“A decision was made to accommodate the overbookings because the number was not so great on the one hand, but also because of the commitment on the Parks Canada side,” said Loken.
“We accepted these reservations. It was no fault of the visitors that the overbooking occurred.”
To protect this sensitive alpine area and provide a wilderness experience for people, a quota system has long been place to limit the number of visitors using the public bus service into Lake O'Hara.
The quota is set at approximately 240 people a day, including day use, camping, guests at Lake O'Hara Lodge, Alpine Club of Canada, commercial guides and operational staff for Parks Canada.
“The quota went into effect as a combination of preserving ecological integrity and the unique visitor experience,” said St. Denis.
Conservationists with Bow Valley Naturalists say the overbooking is not a big number and will unlikely have a large effect for this summer, but they question whether this larger number is going to be the new quota for next year.
“Regardless of one's perception of wilderness, jamming more visitors into Lake O'Hara incrementally degrades everyone's wilderness experience,” said Reg Bunyan, a spokesman for BVN.
Bunyan said one of BVN's major concerns with increasing visitation targets in national parks has been the “utter lack of vision” as to where all these new visitors will go without affecting visitor experience and creating ecological conflicts or, more likely, both.
He said one of the dangers of this lack of planning and foresight is that effects due to crowding result in pressure for poorly scrutinized decisions on such issues as increased quotas, opening the hotel at Sunshine for summer use and new trails and activities in sensitive habitat.
“We do not see any semblance of a long-term plan for managing visitor numbers and one would think that even the most ardent tourism promoter must recognize that recent long weekend gridlock at the east gate and Lake Louise is indicative of a problem,” he said.
“Unfortunately, success seems to be measured only by increasing visitation numbers. There will be no solution to the issue until the definition of success changes and there is a willingness to acknowledge the experiential and ecological issues that go hand in hand with ever increasing visitation.”
St. Denis said if there are cancellations on the days the buses to Lake O'Hara are overbooked, those spots cannot be re-booked.
“If there are cancellations on those days, then they can't be picked up again. If there's a no show at the bus, we will not allow that on those days,” he said.
“On the 50 per cent of days where we're not overbooked, if there are cancellations, then we will allow another booking up to the quota.”
Loken said Parks Canada has had several conversations with Camis about the overbookings.
“Camis has stepped up and will be absorbing the costs incurred by Parks Canada for this overbooking, and in the end, there is no additional cost to Parks Canada or visitors,” he said.
“We will be still using the reservation service in the years to come and we have worked with Camis to establish testing protocol so this will not happen again.”
