Park Visitor Management Platform For Sustainable Tourism

ParkPass is a booking platform for park agencies that want to make their destinations more sustainable, more enjoyable, and more profitable.

Sustainable Growth

FEWER CARS, LESS IMPACT

Park operators can differentiate between types of visitors, such as private car arrivals, private operator clients, public transit users, traditional land owners, local residents, and many others - and create rules for each to fit management priorities

DISPERSE OVERTOURISM

ParkPass is an efficient solution to introduce and manage visitor quotas for parks suffering from over-visitation. Operators can define limits for access points, time slots, or visitor types.

MORE VISITORS, IN RIGHT PLACES

ParkPass helps drive visitors from peak times and destinations to alternatives that are looking for more visitors, or to shoulder seasons. Multiple agencies can redirect visitor traffic to each other.

Better Visitor Experience

PREPARE YOUR VISITORS

Introduce automated pre-departure checklists so every visitor to your parks knows what to expect, and when to come - before they leave their house.

IMPROVE SAFETY

ParkPass offers trip planning tools to promote safer experiences for visitors, and emergency notification tools for park operators. Contact current visitors instantly in case of park emergency, and share trip details with SAR teams if needed.

VISITOR STATISTICS

ParkPass allow park operators to collect and analyze visitation data, survey visitors and continuously learn and get better

Higher Profitability

CAPTURE MORE REVENUE

Send more visitors to lesser-known parks and off-peak times where spare capacity exists - and collect more revenue.

INCREASE COMPLIANCE

ParkPass is a perfect solution for parks where checking every visitor on entrance is impractical, such as mixed development regions, marine parks and commercial operator-driven tourism

LOWER INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS

Reduce reliance on collecting entrance fees at physical park locations even with limited connectivity and remote locales with no Internet

PARTNERS

BOOKING CARES FUND

In December 2018, ParkPass became one of seven projects from around the world accepted into Booking.com's Booking Cares Fund.

Together with the Booking Booster Program and the Booking Cares Labs, the Booking Cares Fund sits alongside Booking.com’s internal volunteer program, where employees have long partnered with local organizations on projects that help improve destinations worldwide. Together these initiatives make up and further expand Booking.com’s commitment to make a positive impact on the global tourism industry. For more information about upcoming programs and opportunities, please visit the Booking Cares website.

Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com B.V. has grown from a small Dutch start-up to one of the largest travel e-commerce companies in the world. Part of Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: BKNG), Booking.com now employs more than 17,000 employees in over 200 offices in 70 countries worldwide.

BETTER ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND TRANSPORTATION (BEST)

BEST is a non-profit charitable organization with a long history promoting sustainable tourism and transportation, through which we help build vibrant, inclusive communities. BEST offers innovative social enterprises, programs and services to encourage, promote and enable sustainable and active transportation choices.

BEST's programs include the award winning Parkbus initiative, The Bicycle Valet, Seniors Transportation Access and Resources (STAR), Living Streets and the BC Commuter Challenge.

AdventureSmart BC

AdventureSmart, and its suite of five programs, is a national prevention program focused on reaching Canadians, and visitors to Canada, who participate in outdoor recreational activities.

ABOUT

ParkPass is a digital platform that will give park agencies complete control over their visitor flow, and help spread benefits of tourism more evenly and equally beyond the “must-see” places. The platform will allow parks to issue visitor and parking passes in advance, limit spot availability for peak times and locations, and redirect visitors to alternative destinations and discourage use of private vehicles. ParkPass will also ensure that park passes are issued remotely and reduce parks’ reliance on expensive, outdated and often impractical methods currently used for fee collection in many locations.

Visitors will receive important park information (such as packing lists, park rules, prohibited item lists) during the registration process, making them more informed before their trip even starts. Real time messaging (such as safety advisories), post-trip information (such as surveys) and time-critical visitor information (such as details on people currently in the park) will give park agencies powerful visitor management tools that will make park visits safer and will further improve visitor experience.

Park agency employees will have direct access to the admin functions in the system, such as admission rates, pass availability, and communication tools. Interagency capabilities will give operators an option to redirect visitor flows to parks outside of their jurisdiction, encouraging cooperation between agencies, local communities, and other stakeholders.

ParkPass is a project of Vancouver-based Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST) .

BEST is a non-profit charitable organization with a long history promoting sustainable tourism and transportation, through which we help build vibrant, inclusive communities. We offer innovative social enterprises, programs and services to encourage, promote and enable sustainable and active transportation choices.

Our current projects include the award winning Parkbus initiative, The Bicycle Valet, Seniors Transportation Access and Resources (STAR), Living Streets and the BC Commuter Challenge.

Our Address

305 – 268 Keefer Street (Sun Wah Centre)

Vancouver BC Canada V6A 1X5

Phone: +1 604-669-2860

Email: info(at)best.bc.ca

TEAM

Boris Issaev

Boris is the co-founder and CEO of the award-winning Parkbus initiative, the world’s first dedicated city-to-park bus service that expanded across Canada and inspired similar initiatives around the world.

Boris won numerous awards for his work, which was featured by over 200 publications including the National Geographic.

Boris holds an MBA as well as a computer science degrees.

Vitaly Volovich

Vitaly is a data scientist and software engineer who architected, automated and deployed intricate analytics solutions, and complex distributed environments that handle billions of transactions every day.

He is director of engineering at Panvista Analytics, and a key advisor for several other companies, including Parkbus, on technology, automation, scalability and security.

Stephanie Williams

Stephanie is the General Manager of BEST. She turned a small Bicycle Valet program in Vancouver into an extremely popular, successful social enterprise, while leading several other projects, and helping BEST achieve financial stability.

Stephanie has extensive experience working with government, nonprofit and private organizations, and holds a Masters of Community Development and a Bachelors in Human Geography.

ADVISORS

Alan Latourelle

CEO of Parks Canada (2002-2015), Order of Canada (2018)

Maike Lieverscheidt

Global Change Manager at Booking.com, former senior manager at Expedia Inc., Yahoo

Justin Ellis

Senior Associate at RC Strategies + PERC, former Director with Leave No Trace Canada, former Manager of Regional Planning for Alberta Province

Michael Bertuzzi

Professor and program coordinator at School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts at Centennial College. Former Project Manager of Visitor Services, Economic Development & Culture, City of Toronto