Building a booking engine for a market nobody else wanted
Niche campsite operators needed calendar, pricing, and SMS. Generic platforms over-engineered everything else. So I built what they actually needed.
GTM Architect & Growth Operator · Now · 8 December 2025
TL;DR · Key insights
- Niche booking markets are underserved because generic platforms over-engineer the wrong things
- Core insight: campsite operators need calendar, pricing, and SMS confirmation: nothing else matters at launch
- Built mobile-first because 80%+ of campsite searches happen on phone, often at the gate
- Revenue model is transaction fee, not SaaS subscription: aligns incentives with operators
The Polish campsite and RV pitch market had a problem: most booking happens by phone or through a booking.com listing that costs the operator 15–18% per reservation. Neither option is good.
Phone bookings are lost revenue (no late-night inquiries, no searchability, no upsell). Booking.com works for hotels; it’s expensive overkill for a 40-pitch campsite with a picnic table and a composting toilet.
So I built a vertical booking engine specifically for this gap.
Product constraints that shaped the build
Operators are not tech-native. The admin interface needed to work on a Samsung Galaxy running Chrome in a campsite’s wifi signal. No onboarding call, no help docs, no training budget. The UI had to be self-evident.
Guests book on mobile. Analytics from the first operator’s old site showed 82% mobile. The booking flow had to be one-thumb operable: select dates, select pitch, pay, done. No account creation required.
Pricing is irregular. Campsites have weekend pricing, peak-season pricing, early-bird discounts, last-minute pricing, and per-pitch or per-person pricing depending on the operator. Any generic booking engine either over-simplifies or over-engineers this. I built a flexible pricing matrix that covers the 80% case without requiring a PhD to configure.
Technical decisions
What I’d change
The online payment adoption was lower than expected in the first cohort of operators. Polish campsite guests are used to paying at arrival. The conversion rate on full prepayment was acceptable; the conversion rate on “reserve now, pay on arrival” was significantly higher but created cancellation headaches.
A better holdback model: small deposit online, balance at arrival: would have been the right product decision from day one. I added it in the third month.
The niche market lesson
Payment model evolution
Higher trust signal, lower conversion. Polish campsite guests are used to paying at arrival. Cancellation handling was clean but volume was weak.
Small deposit online, rest on site. Higher conversion, slight cancellation risk, but operationally better for both sides. Should have shipped this on day one.
Related: GTM Tools: Build vs Buy Decision Framework for Operators · How to Build Micro-SaaS with AI Tools: product lessons from 10+ shipped apps
