If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated by BC Ferries’ sold-out sailings, you’re not alone.
Vedran Budimcic and his wife were in the same boat (pun intended). After struggling to secure a reservation on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route, Budimcic’s wife asked him to keep an eye out for openings — but instead, he built a solution.
BC Ferries
Budimcic created a free SMS-based service, Next Sailing, that alerts BC Ferries passengers when a sold-out sailing becomes available. The service officially launched on September 26.
“The impetus was my wife needing to get back from Vancouver to Victoria during the summer,” Budimcic told Daily Hive.
“She had flexibility on which day to come back but not much flexibility on the time of day. She’d been watching for reservation openings for a whole week periodically and didn’t see anything come up.”
Wanting to help but knowing he couldn’t keep checking during work hours, Budimcic built a prototype that ran on his computer, checking periodically for the ferry she needed. “After about a day, I got a text message and purchased the reservation.”
From this successful experiment, Budimcic spent about 30 hours of his spare time refining the service to ensure it didn’t overwhelm BC Ferries’ servers.
Next Sailing
With his software expertise, he crafted the service responsibly to avoid causing strain or getting banned from the system. “It can take time to make sure it balances being up-to-date with putting too much load on the servers,” he added.
Though BC Ferries offers live webcam coverage and a mobile app, a text-based notification service like Budimcic’s was something new. Senior Communications Advisor Liza Yuzda acknowledged the unique approach.
“We are continually looking at new approaches and technologies to make travelling on BC Ferries as seamless as possible for our customers,” said Yuzda. “While we haven’t adopted a specific text alert service like Next Sailing, we are always looking at ways to enhance customer convenience.”
Budimcic plans to keep the service free and expand the tool to alert users when reservations for larger vehicles become available. He also says he’ll take donations for the service.
Check out Next Sailing here.