Website for sharing campsites

Hey all, I built a platform where people can post and find campsites to share (like, real campsites in campgrounds) and wanted to let the MP community know. Climbers are a big part of the inspiration for this project, and as our community (and the number of us sleeping in vehicles) continues to grow the challenges of sleeping near the places we want to be will keep growing too. Sharing extra space in existing, developed campsites is one way to help address those challenges.

This has been a pet project of mine over the past couple years, and I'm stoked to share it. If you think about the unit economics it's a pretty terrible business idea, so rest assured that I'm coming at this from a place of truly wanting it to exist for the outdoor community. Sure, I've driven around asking people if I can split their site with them, and most times I've found someone kind enough to let me. But it sure would be nice to have that puzzle solved before it's dark and I'm starving after getting lost on the descent from a long route.

Anyways, check it out if you're interested at https://spotaroo.com/ and if you think it's useful, share it with your friends or people you meet out climbing. Thanks for reading.

- Scott

p.s. hope this post is permitted, I tried to find forum rules but couldn't find any published.

This is long overdue, thanks for putting it together!  Agreed on the crowding. The parks will never add more campgrounds...despite thousands of acres of available land. I've driven though countless campsites filled with single cars, clearly climbers, and wished I wasn't so tired from the drive, and or more outgoing. I'm assuming it may eventually grow to be something like the couch surfing site where people are rated...as in: nice guy, washed his dishes each night, wasn't weird...that would be even cooler. And maybe some tie in functions for linking mtn project and other social media platforms...to get a feel for who you are inviting to share your site. 

Great idea!

Thanks Mark and David! I love to hear when people are into the idea. Mark, thank you for the thoughts and you've definitely got an eye on future features we hope to push out. Currently guests and hosts can review each other after a reservation, but we'd love to improve that functionality and add in some integrations as well. 

If you both wouldn't mind telling a friend about it, I'd really appreciate it. The hardest part of this is getting the word out to enough people for there to be lots of sites available to share when we need them.

Thank you both again for the support.

This is great Scott. Thank you. any chance there will be an app in the future?

Hey Robert, thank you for the support. A mobile app is indeed in the works, but it will be a while before it's launched. We know that most people will be accessing the platform from mobile so optimizing for the mobile experience is our next development priority. Until the app is launched, can you see yourself using the mobile version of the website?

Solid idea, Scotty. I was just trying it out for fun from home, and couldn’t get any of the common Indian Creek campgrounds (ie creek pasture and Super Bowl) to appear in the drop down lists no matter how hard I tried searching; I even tried just searching “Indian Creek, Utah,” and couldn’t find anything relevant. Not sure if you have a way of filtering out results, or maybe a map function to help pinpoint the exact location.

There isn’t really service at the creek, so it’s kind of a silly example, but it’s the first one that came to my mind, and is one of the most popular areas for climbers. 

Hey Emilio, thanks for the heads up. Currently the map/location functionality is through Mapbox which does a pretty decent job of locating campgrounds, but as you can see isn't perfect. Good to know about the creek, I'll work on fixing that given the popularity and sensitivity of the area. Right now, our location functionality definitely does better with national/state park campgrounds in more populated areas, but look out for improvements for less developed zones that are popular with climbers. Thanks again for the note and for checking it out!

Scotty Tecatewrote:

Hey Robert, thank you for the support. A mobile app is indeed in the works, but it will be a while before it's launched. We know that most people will be accessing the platform from mobile so optimizing for the mobile experience is our next development priority. Until the app is launched, can you see yourself using the mobile version of the website?

Yes I'll be using it.

That's awesome, I'm glad to hear it!

Hey Scotty, I think this is a great idea. Especially in crowded places like Colorado, something like this might catch on quickly if it gets marketed well. I'll send an email with some more thoughts - cheers