CampingNinja.com Review

Campining Ninja is a new site designed to help you book campsites online and could save you money, time and help you find that hidden gem with hot showers that takes groups in the Lake District (for instance).

Almost every area of the travel industry has been touched by the internet and in some cases transformed as companies like lastminute.com allowed us to book cheap hotel rooms at low prices, utilising rooms that would otherwise remain empty. But camping has lagged behind, many of the best sites are run by individuals in locations that don’t have reliable broadband connections and we know of many great sites that don’t even have a website!

But in 2010 the average consumer expects to be able to book online and with the popularity of camping exploding there is a big opportunity for whoever cracks this problem. The latest to try is Camping Ninja , a startup founded by Rhian Evans and Geoff Vaughan who won funding in a Dragons Den style pitch to build the site.

How it Works

Finding a site

Camping Ninja is a great looking site with rolling hills like our own! But the site’s good looks don’t get in the way of it’s function, Camping Ninja is simply laid out with a basic search accompanied by comprehensive filters to help you find the perfect site, including the option of nudist friendly and solar powered!

Each site is accompanied with a brief description and a very thorough full listing. Booking a pitch is a simple process familiar to anyone who has booked a hotel online.

The ninja speaks

We spoke to Geoff from Camping Ninja about what inspired him and Rhian to setup the site.

Geoff: The idea behind campingninja came about from frustrations we have faced for years as keen campers. There you are, sat in the office on a Tuesday lunchtime. The weather forecast looks great for the upcoming weekend and you think to yourself, let’s go camping. You would ring 8-10 different campsites trying to find availability in a campsite which was right for you. Usually leaving a message as campsite owners are busy people. You would send off booking enquiry forms and e-mails looking for availability and sometimes wait up to 3 days for a reply.

The frustrating part is the amount of time spent trying to secure a booking. I can book flights, restaurants, hostels, B&Bs, hotels in Barcelona all within a couple of minutes and yet finding and booking a campsite an hours drive away from your home can take days.

We are working hard to get campsites on board with campingninja. This type of model is not new in the world of travel but it is a new way of working for the camping industry. People no longer want to spend days trying to find and book a campsite. Our goal is that they will never have to again.

We have made it really simple for a campsite to join us and we would encourage keen campers to help us out and let your favourite campsite know they could be selling their free pitches through us. The price campers pay is the same as turning up on site. Signing up a campsite

Five Ninja Stars out of Five

We have to congratulate Camping Ninja on designing a site that makes sense of campsites sometimes perplexing pricing structures and for getting so many sites on board already.

The challenge moving forward will be to get the majority of UK sites signed up but with Pitchup.com (see our review from last year) relaunching their site to include online booking it’s an idea that’s time is clearly now.