BOOKING THE DREAM

Guest: “I’m on my way to Yellowstone. I’m in (fill in the blank) and I want to book a room in the Park for three days starting tomorrow.”

Reservations Agent for Xanterra Parks and Resorts: “I’m so sorry but Yellowstone’s lodging books up a year in advance. At this moment, nothing is available.”

G: “But I came all the way from (fill in the blank) and I really want to stay in the Park.  Have you tried Lake Hotel? Mammoth? Isn’t there something? Preferably something with a view? Oh, and a swimming pool would be lovely.”

RA: “I’m really very sorry, but at this moment, nothing is available anywhere. You can keep calling back-perhaps there will be a cancellation....oh wait a minute, one of the Roosevelt Roughrider Cabins just became available. Would you like to book it?”

G: “Does it have a TV?"

RA: “Ma’am it doesn’t even have running water.”

Really, I’m not making this up and although this is not a word-for-word conversation I can guarantee that on any given day, every single one of the thirty Xanterra Reservation Agents handling the calls has at least one phone conversation that goes something like this. The saying around here is “all booked up, all the time”. And quite a few coming for the first time expect the Courtyard at Marriott, not realizing they will be getting a rustic cabin that is a bit nicer than Green Acres.

Xanterra, the company for which I and all the RAs work, is Yellowstone Park’s only lodging concessionaire.  Yellowstone offers an incredible array of lodging, making it is confusing and time-consuming to review and reserve online. It’s difficult to even figure out WHAT you want online.

That’s where knowledgeable RAs like my friends Jane, Ginger and David come in. My friend Jane feels a great responsibility to the guests who are calling for reservations for what might be their once-in-a-lifetime vacation, a trip they have been planning for years.  “We are the first contact with the Park usually and that’s important.” I agree.

During the busy summer season, not a single room in the Park is vacant. If you want to snag a nice room, you either have to book at least a year in advance or be really persistent with your calls to Reservations in the hopes you will call at the exact moment someone cancels.  And cancel they do.  Savvy Park visitors book multiple reservations, canceling at the last minute (within the 48-hour time limit to get their money back). And the second a room becomes available, it gets booked. Xanterra is looking closely at this phenomenon, aware that this keeps some people who love the Park from being able to spend their 50^th Anniversary in the same spot where he proposed. There are really no limits to the popularity of this Park.

Why do theses legions of people come to the Park? Ask your typical reservations agent and they will tell you “It’s Yellowstone!” People come because it is perhaps the most famous National Park in the World. Besides scores of North Americans, people come from Europe, from Asia (in droves), from Australia, New Zealand, North America, Russia – anywhere that the population can afford to take a trip into the hinterlands of the US. They gasp in awe at the geysers; they film the elk; they stop in the middle of the road for the bison (on the other hand, we who live here are pretty tired of the traffic jams created by one lone bull bison who is simply lying on the ground taking a nap).

My friend Ginger tells me a lot of people come to celebrate life’s milestones – an anniversary, a last trip as a couple before becoming parents, a last trip with grandma, a proposal. Just about every reason there is to celebrate brings people to our Wonderland. As an RA, she works very hard to find anything at all available for 95-year-old grandma and her multiple family members but she says generally people calling in for reservations have no idea of the popularity of the Earth’s first National Park owned by its citizens. And they are surprised and upset there are no rooms at the Inn…or the Lodge….or even the cabins.

David admits making reservations at Yellowstone is a complex process, with a variety of venues and types of accommodation from the very rustic cabins at Roosevelt (at $69 per night the best bargain and the most popular in the Park) to the 2-bedroom, 2-bath, condo-like Presidential Suite at Lake Hotel (at $600 per night he still thinks this a bargain if it is a large family or group of friends). The average night’s stay is around $200.  Generally, about 50% of their callers are looking for the cabins, the least expensive accommodation in the Park.  However, often desperate guests will take a room that is beyond their budget if a cancellation occurs – the Yellowstone experience is just that valuable.

David tells me first time guests have no idea how enormous the Park is, which is about 100 miles long from the North Entrance at Gardiner Montana to the South Entrance just above Grand Teton National Park. A guest will want four nights in the same lodging, thinking about how difficult it might be to schlep the spouse and kids to another ‘village’. David tries to explain that booking a room for four consecutive nights all in one place means that family will spend hours and miles if they want to see even the ‘main attractions’ of the Park. Ginger encourages people to go for at least two reservations in different parts of the Park to cut down on the driving time so they can spend more time walking around the geysers or enjoying the animals at Lamar Valley or participating in one of the many, many activities that are available for our guests.

Xanterra’s website for Yellowstone is quite extensive but even in this plugged-in world talking to a live person can make a guest’s reservation process – and their visit – so much more enjoyable. Reservations Agents are provided free passes to about all the activities and encouraged to experience each one in order to give the guest the best information available on not just the lodges and cabins but the great variety of activities available in the Park.

If you plan to ride horses or go on a boat ride on Lake Yellowstone or have the famous ‘chuckwagon’ dinner at Roosevelt, you need to buy your tickets ahead. And matching your lodging to your activities in order to simplify your driving time takes the professional expertise of RAs like David. David, a returning employee of Xanterra, uses his extensive knowledge of the Park to help a family figure out just what activities their family might best enjoy. Because the guests won’t be watching TV (not available) or playing online video games (wifi if available sucks), Ginger is quick to suggest alternative activities. What else will they be doing with their time? Her job is to make our guests feel like they have had a full and fun day without all the modern conveniences of ‘the world out there’.

I was curious, if reserving lodging and activities is so complicated, how in the world are reservations for non-English speaking guests (and there are many, many of those) handled?  David speaks French and sometimes discovers a guest might speak a bit of French but most often guests muddle through their booking in English, with maybe some friend or family member helping on the other side. A complex process made more complex because Yellowstone is a destination known and desired across our globe.

Of course, it can be easier when the person calling is a returning guest. Yellowstone has an avid fan following, Yellowstone ‘groupies’ you might say. Most returning guests generally know what they want and know they need to call well in advance to get it.  These are the people that might come to the Park every year or every few years. On the dark side, they sometimes can be some of the demanding guests since they already are fixed on what they want this year’s Yellowstone vacation to look like.

Yellowstone is OZ and the Reservation Agents often hold the keys. Being a Reservations Agent at Yellowstone is part sales, part hospitality. Every one of us working here loves this place or we wouldn’t put up with the insufferable lack of wifi, the dropped phone calls, the long lines of cars driving every so slowly by the sleeping bison. My friends the Reservation Agents are the first ones to invite you, the first ones that say “We are so happy you want to visit.  We are so glad you want to come.” I can just hear Jane’s soft inviting Tennessee drawl, "Ya’ll come and I just know you’ll have the time of your life.”