PacketFiend wrote:
canoeguitar wrote:
Another reason not to eliminate the transferring of campsites...if I’ve booked a site with friends, and for some unforeseen reason I can’t make it, I’d have to transfer the booking to someone in the group or everyone would be out of luck.
I agree that the scalping of sites should be dealt with, but not by eliminating transfers altogether.
Ontario Parks does ask for the names of those in your group, when you reserve. It wouldn't be cumbersome to allow
anyone on that list to check in, or to transfer the booking to anyone on that list, if transfers were to be prohibited, I would think.
Ay, but that's the problem when we try to regulate away any possible bad behaviour.
Take this scenario: I make my booking for me and 2 friends. A couple weeks later, another friend asks if they can join us. So I call up and add them to the booking. That's totally legit, and would have to be allowed, right? Of course it would. But then by the time of the booking, I've had something come up and I can't make it. So I have to cancel, and we just let someone else in the registered party check in - maybe that friend who joined last. So far that's still totally legit, and yet in process how would that be any different than a scalper making the booking, selling it for profit, adding the buyer to the party, then later cancelling themselves out?
When we rely on regulations, we will always have at least two results: innocent bystanders with legitimate needs who are unfairly targeted, and malicious bad actors who will always find a way to wriggle around the letter of the law.
At the end of the day, I think we just have to ask ourselves: is this problem big enough to justify the unintended consequences on innocent bystanders that would inevitably accompany any action we take against it?
For me, I think their efforts would be much better spent just opening more parks and increasing the number of available sites: increase the supply and the demand would be sated, and these types of behaviours would go away on their own.