Behind the map: teaching Vacamp to read campsite booking systems

Ten past nine. A lay-by above Hossegor, one bar of signal, the kid on the bench seat with her laptop and a deadline she won't tell me about. Coffee from the stove. Sand in everything. She opens the Vacamp map for tonight: a campsite with wifi and a socket. Three pins within twenty minutes. One shows a price. She leaves it open and goes back to work.

Six hours in a lay-by. Nothing to do but read over her shoulder. So, where does a price come from?

First the map needs campsites. It takes them from OpenStreetMap, where volunteers have drawn in more than a hundred thousand across Europe, every municipal field and every farm with a tap. Volunteers. I approve.

Then it needs to know how each one takes bookings. Vacamp visits the website like a nosy traveller and looks for fingerprints: a widget, a script, a link to somebody's booking portal. Dozens of systems out there, each with its own bloody idea of what a date is. The ones it doesn't know yet get counted, and the most common get learned first.

Then it learns to ask. Same question every time: room for these people, these nights, and what does it cost. Read-only. It never books, never holds a pitch, never goes near anybody's card. It asks and it listens.

← Black. Obviously not me.

Then it checks itself. A new system starts in the shadows, asking about dates far enough ahead that nobody's holiday is in the way, until it has worked on enough campsites to be trusted. It has learned a few things the hard way. A green calendar isn't a yes. A price isn't a pitch: one system will cheerfully quote for a site that's full. If a system changes and the answers go strange, Vacamp takes it off the map until somebody fixes it.

And it minds its manners. Only so many questions at once. Every request says who's asking. Ask it to slow down and it slows down. A better guest than most motorhomes.

Which answers my question. A price on that map comes from the campsite's own booking system, asked just now, or it isn't there. No guessing. No green squares.

Ten to five. The bar comes back. The kid sends whatever it was, taps the pin with the price and books it, direct, on the campsite's own page. Then she shuts the laptop and looks out of the windscreen for the first time all day.

Wifi, a socket, a hot shower. Fine. I like it. Don't tell anyone.

Keep it unbooked.
Bo

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