How Rec Technologies Tries to Ease Summer Camp Stress
How Rec Technologies Tries to Ease Summer Camp Stress
https://www.govtech.com/biz/how-rec-technologies-tries-to-ease-summer-camp-stress
Publish Date: 2026-03-17 19:40:00
Source Domain: www.govtech.com
For some parents, getting their children into summer camp is the Mount Everest of civic adventures.
Camp can be expensive. Waiting lines and other bureaucratic barriers can make the DMV seem like a spring dance. Slots fill with merciless speed, forcing some families to make other plans for how their children will spend their free time in nice weather.
But a park district in Colorado is using government technology to ease the pain of summer camp registration, a move that underscores the business opportunity for suppliers of recreational management tools.
Just more than a month ago, the Apex Park and Recreation District in Arvada, Colo., — a Denver-area city of about 130,000 residents — began using online registration and facility management system from California-based Rec Technologies.
That new system is getting an early test as parents race to put their children into local summer camps.
“It’s like Taylor Swift tickets” is how Julie Hines, the district’s director of recreation services, describes the rush. “They usually sell out in minutes.”
The district runs three summer camps, and the new tech — which essentially had a soft launch on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 19 — allows residents to use a tool similar to the Amazon Wish List to pick out their preferred camp days, she told Government Technology.
That not only brings more order and stability to the process — and, presumably, reduces parental anxiety — but also lets park staff get a tighter, back-end look at summer camp supply and demand. Summer camp represents a significant source of revenue for the park district.
“It’s all about the customer experience,” Hines said.
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