People often ask, “Does Virginia State Parks run its own reservation call center?” The answer is “Yes!” The reason Virginia State Parks chose to run its own call center in 1994 was that the third party contractor we’d had for years offered NO information on any of the parks, NO toll-free number to call, and it appeared sales/revenue were stagnant at best.
The first day we opened our own call center, May 16, 1994, we made more money with credit card payments alone than we’d ever made any previous year! Further, we have found over the 15 years in existence, that training our own Reservation Counselors made sense as we can monitor what they say/do and we make sure they know where to look or who to call to provide excellent customer service at the time the reservation is made. Our counselors are knowledgeable on policies, procedures, parks, campsites, cabins, lodges, picnic shelters, annual parking passes, and even know about lottery and reservation hunts held annually in Fall/Winter at several state parks.
Now we offer next day reservations (for a nominal nonrefundable pass-through web fee per reservation) on the Internet as well as in the call center. One notation however: ReserveAmerica ONLY provides Virginia State Parks with its software, and does not in any fashion handle our web reservations once made; ReserveAmerica should only be contacted directly for technical on line issues.
All web customers are referred on line to 1-800-933-7275 to CHANGE any Virginia State Park web reservation in any manner. We are open Monday-Friday 9am to 5pm ET and welcome anyone to call us. It is prudent to call as far in advance as you can to get your first choice ANY time of the year, not just for holiday reservations. We make reservations up to 11 months from the date of your phone call and our transfers are free of charge provided they fall within the parameters offered based on type of inventory reserved. We look forward to hearing from you.