The next release of bookings for campgrounds within Cape Range National Park, Nyinggulara National Park and Nyinggulu Coastal Reserves on the Ningaloo Coast’s will open at 10am on Tuesday 7 April on parkstay.dbca.wa.gov.au.

This release covers bookings for stays between Friday 25 September and Thursday 29 October, which includes the Kings Birthday long weekend and the October school holiday period.

This is the third release in the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions’ (DBCA) trial of monthly booking releases for Ningaloo Coast campgrounds.

DBCA Assistant Director Visitor Services Rod Annear said the trial has seen bookings released in monthly blocks at 10am on a Tuesday, rather than daily at midnight.

“The aim of this trial was to see whether moving to a monthly booking opening schedule reduces the very high rate of cancellation at Ningaloo Coast campgrounds and makes access fairer,” Mr Annear said.

“DBCA made improvements to the queueing system following the first release and has improved it further ahead of April to continue improving the user experience.”

To prepare for the 10am Tuesday release, DBCA’s Park Stay WA will be temporarily closed at midnight on Monday 6 April.

There is no advantage to accessing Park Stay WA before 10am on Tuesday, as the system will reset at opening time and automatically place users in a queue.

To avoid losing your place in the queue, it is important that you don’t:
•    refresh or reload the page while queuing
•    stay away from the queue page for too long
•    join the queue on more than one browser tab or window.

People who need to make bookings elsewhere in the state, or change existing reservations, are encouraged to do so on a different day to avoid potential delays.

Mr Annear said a decision on whether to continue the trial would be made following 7 April.

“Early indications show more positives than negatives to the monthly release model, however we won’t see its full impacts on cancellation rates until later in the year when these bookings are actually used,” he said.

For more information about the trial, visit exploreparks.dbca.wa.gov.au/ningaloo-coast-camping-trial-faq.