Case study 02 · Camping in five countriesCase study 02

EscapeTo

A camping search engine for five countries, made by a studio in Melbourne.

EscapeTo puts more than 36,000 campsites in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and Chile on one map, on the web and iPhone, and plans the drive between them, so you can set off knowing where you'll sleep.

Visit escapeto.travel (opens in a new tab) About the iPhone app ↗ (opens in a new tab)
EscapeTo on the web: the headline 'Discover America's best camping spots' above a search panel with tabs for different kinds of stay, Filters, Search and Plan a road trip buttons, and chips for popular regions and routes, with the map and list of results starting below.
EscapeTo's road-trip planner on a phone: a route drawn from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a map of California, with distance, drive time and a Save trip button.
  1. WebThe search page, with filters and routes
  2. iPhoneA route from San Francisco to Los Angeles, drawn in the appA route from SF to LA
What it is
Camping search engine and road-trip planner
Platforms
Web and iPhone
Status
Live at escapeto.travel
Our role
We designed and built it, and still run it

(01)The problem

In every country, campsites are listed all over the place.

Camping is spread across national parks, state and provincial parks, private campgrounds, RV parks and free sites on public land, and they rarely share one list. That's as true in Chile as it is in Utah.

EscapeTo brings more than 36,000 of those campsites together across the US, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina and Chile, including over 2,000 free and dispersed sites. It's free, and it works in English and Spanish. It isn't offered in Australia, where our own Camping Australia does that job.

Working out where to stop on a long drive means checking many of them. We built EscapeTo so the campsites, the map and the route sit in one place, with saved campsites and an AI Camping Assistant beside them.

(02)What we built

Search campgrounds, RV parks and free camps on one map.

Start with a whole country and narrow it with filters. Results show on the map and in a list at the same time, so you can see what's near what before you open a single listing.

EscapeTo's map and list view for Yosemite: campsite pins and clusters around Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, Tuolumne and Mono Lake on the map, and a list of campgrounds with photos, such as Tuolumne Meadows and Porcupine Flat, each with a Trip button.
Yosemite, opened from the popular regions list, on the mapTuolumne Meadows, in the list and on the map
  • 01

    Filters cut the country down to your kind of stay

    Choose campgrounds, RV parks or free camps, then keep filtering until the results fit the trip you're planning.

  • 02

    You see where a campsite is before you open it

    You can judge a campsite by where it sits before reading a word about it. Open it for photos, facilities, reviews, directions and a five-day forecast, then save it or add it to a trip.

  • 03

    Popular regions and routes give you a place to start

    If all you have is Yosemite, Moab, the Pacific Coast Highway or Route 66 West, pick it from the list and the map opens there.

(03) · Plan a road trip

Draw the route, then pick the camps.

Choose where you're starting and where you're heading, and EscapeTo draws the route with the distance and drive time, then lists camps near your stops. You can decide where each night ends before you leave home.

Add as many stops as the trip needs, with the nights you'll spend at each. Tell it whether you're in a car, a van, an RV or towing a trailer and the route allows for it, then export the trip as GPX or KML. On iPhone, ride mode speaks the turns from a GPX route, even with the screen locked.

EscapeTo's trip planner: the Pacific Coast Highway route from San Francisco to Los Angeles drawn on a map of California, with a panel showing drive time and distance, stop A San Francisco and stop B Los Angeles via Monterey and Big Sur, an Ask AI button, camps near your stops and a Save trip button.
The Pacific Coast Highway, opened from the routes list

Popular regions on EscapeTo

  • Yosemite
  • Yellowstone
  • Great Smoky Mountains
  • Moab & Arches
  • Pacific Northwest
  • Colorado Rockies
  • Adirondacks
  • Joshua Tree
  • Glacier NP
  • Florida Keys

Ready-made routes

  • Pacific Coast Highway
  • Blue Ridge Parkway
  • Utah's Mighty 5
  • Route 66 West

(04)Where AI fits

Some questions are easier to ask than to filter for.

The AI Camping Assistant sits next to search and inside the trip planner. It's there for the questions filters handle badly, like a free spot near Moab that suits a small RV, and you can type them in plain English or ask out loud. In the reply below it names campsites you can look up, then offers follow-up questions you can tap. Campsites in an answer link through, so you can open one, save it or add it to a trip.

The AI Camping Assistant panel answering 'Free camping near Moab that suits a small RV?'. The reply lists free spots around Moab, says only one of them, Rimside Campsite, a free BLM site west of town, is marked as suitable for RVs and trailers, and warns that it is tagged backcountry, so expect a dirt road in. Suggested follow-ups from the same answer: 'Search wider for RV-friendly free camping', 'How long is the drive to Rimside?' and 'Show paid campgrounds near Moab for RVs'.
  • 01It names a campsite you can findRimside Campsite is a name you can look up and save. A general tip about Moab would send you back to search.
  • 02It says what the listings don'tOnly one of the free spots near Moab is marked as fit for an RV, so the reply says so, and warns you about the dirt road in.
  • 03You can ask from the trip plannerThere's an Ask AI button beside the route, so a question about where to stop doesn't mean leaving the plan.
Two crops of one reply from the AI Camping Assistant on escapeto.travel.

(05)Owners and campers

The people closest to a campsite can fix its listing.

A directory goes out of date whenever a campground changes and nobody tells it. EscapeTo lets owners manage their own listings and lets campers suggest the spots it's missing.

EscapeTo's host portal page, inviting parks and campsite owners to sign in and manage their own listings.
A

Owners can sign in and edit their listing

The host portal lets parks and campsite owners change their own listing when something changes on the ground.

EscapeTo's Submit a Campsite form: step one of five (Basics, Location, Features, Photos, Submit), with fields for the campsite name, type and a short description.
B

A short form for spots we're missing

Anyone who knows a campsite EscapeTo hasn't got can send in its name, location, features and photos.

(06)How it runs

We built EscapeTo, and we still run it.

If the map stops loading or a listing is wrong, fixing it is our job. Keeping EscapeTo going comes down to four jobs.

  1. Keeping the site up

    Hosting escapeto.travel, and keeping search and the map working.

  2. Fixing what people report

    Updating campsite details and reading through what owners and campers send in.

  3. Shipping updates

    We put out each update to escapeto.travel and the iPhone app ourselves.

  4. Minding the assistant

    Deciding what the AI Camping Assistant can draw on and how it answers.

A client's product gets the same four

(07) · For your project

Got a directory nobody can find anything in?

Start a project Email contact@jola.com.au
Next case · 03 of 06 Camping Australia An outdoor gear store with a directory of over 3,300 free and paid campsites, on the web, iOS and Android.