[refurb]

This is what they do with The Wave.

I believe they allow 20 per day. 10 are first-come first-served and 10 are a lottery you can enter for a few dollars in advance.

Seems pretty fair to me.

[shp0ngle]

...that is exactly what the actual article is talking about.

The lottery makes most money go to Booz Allen Hamilton.

[refurb]

How do we know the money goes to Booz Allen? Presumably there is some sort of contract between BAH the government to run Recreation.gov?

Does BAH keep the whole fee? Do they keep some of it? Did they get paid $0 and only get the fee?

[giantg2]

A lot of that is in the article. Nice little graphs of it too.

[refurb]

Please point it out? All I see is how much goes to the park, with the assumption the rest goes to recreation.gov, but just because the recreation.gov gets it doesn't mean Booz Allen keeps it all.

[systems_glitch]

Article sez the gov't gets to collect $9 on a $10 entry for tickets that are awarded. Booz Allen keeps $10 entry on all tickets that aren't awarded. Apparently the award rate is around 3%.

Booz Allen wouldn't have offered to design and run the whole thing "for free" if it wasn't immensely popular! They and others like them are not called "beltway bandits" for nothing.

[refurb]

Booz Allen keeps $10 entry on all tickets that aren't awarded.

But how do we know that's true. Has the author seen the contract between the government and Booz Allen?

[jfengel]

Booz is recreation.gov.

[refurb]

I get that, but Booz is a government contractor providing this service. Presumably there is some details in the contract that lay out where money collected goes.

Some fees collected go to the Park Service, and some don't. Does Booz keep everything else? What are the contract details with the government?

[kevviiinn]

Recreation.gov is Booz Allen

[nofunsir]

YES they keep the whole lottery fee.

WORSE YET, they get to set the fee themselves! The park system just goes along with what they pick.

They got in trouble for this because by law there was supposed to be a public comment period regarding fee changes.

They got some judge or official to sign off something saying effectively: "x = whatever BAH decides; Fee = x;"

[lifeonlars]

They keep the whole fee.

[ghaff]

The issue is that the losers still apparently pay. Take that away and I agree that some variant of this is probably the optimal system given too many people and not enough slots.