Convenience? Or Profiteering on the National Parks?
National Park Reservations is not fraudulent, but the company capitalizes on people clicking on the first link in an internet search, and interjecting themselves into the reservation systems of the National Parks Accommodations and Activities. Where they may offer convenience to travelers planning multiple park trips, so that bookings can be made through one agency for multiple locations, this convenience comes at a cost: Once National Parks Reservations has made a reservation on your behalf, the on-site Parks staff can do nothing to aid or assist you with that reservation, and all changes, or cancellations, have to be handled by National Park Reservations. They also submit their reservations to the individual Park Concessioners, and require up to 48 hours to confirm those reservations. If you contact the actual National Park Facility directly you will have instant confirmation. Perspective customers should also be aware that National Park Reservations charges a non-refundable 10% reservation fee.
Our National Park System is particularly susceptible to predatory profiteering on the Public Service of the Parks, and National Assets. All Third Party Providers should be held under the utmost scrutiny at all times, because they have often attained permits to operate that do not benefit - and can even harm - the parks they profit from. To repeat: National Parks Reservations does not represent themselves as anything other than a third party reservation system, and submits National Park reservation requests on behalf of customers for a fee. They appear to be doing what they say they are doing, but their business derives from aggressive marketing and passive customers allowing themselves to be redirected to their service.
April 20, 2022
Unprompted review