CAMPING enthusiast Geoff Vaughan is aiming to revolutionise the way pitches are booked after winning a Dragon's Den-style competition.

Geoff, from Cullompton, and his business partner Rhian Evans have launched a new website called Campingninja, allowing campers to search for sites and make bookings online.

The pair took voluntary redundancy from their jobs with an adventure travel company to embark on the venture.

Having taken the plunge and handed in their notice, they were soon boosted by their success in the Travel Trade Gazette Big Idea contest, scooping £100,000 of investment from a panel of successful travel entrepreneurs.

Now, after months of work to build the website and get campsite owners to sign up to it, Campingninja is up and running.

And Geoff, 34, said a high proportion of the 62 sites on board so far were in the West Country.

"Devon and Cornwall are absolutely crucial because of the vast number of campsites and in terms of visitor numbers," he said. "It's not just tourists coming from other parts of the country — a big proportion of people who go camping are not actually travelling that far."

The pair's own experiences of planning trips led them to identify a gap in the market for a website allowing people to browse for campsites, find availability and book online all in the same place.

"The idea was born of frustration that it's up to the customer to ring around or email each individual campsite," said Geoff. "It would take perhaps a day to find out if they had availability. That should be the easy part and camping should be about going out and having a great time.

"Websites like ours exist in the hotel and B&B industry and you can search for everything from trains to golf courses but not campsites."

Rhian added: "Seventy per cent of those booking a holiday in the UK choose, and expect to find and book, where they stay online, and this percentage is set to increase. While camping is becoming ever-more popular, we realised that the industry was in danger of being left behind."

The site is already getting up to 5,000 visitors a day. The founders hope to have around 1,000 campsites across the UK registered within three or four years, with the ultimate aim of going international.

Campsite owners can choose how many pitches to allocate to the website and receive an automatic alert when these are booked up, enabling them to increase the allocation.

Campers pay a 10 per cent deposit to Campingninja to secure the booking, and the rest to the campsite when they get there.

The overall cost to the user is the same as booking direct, with campsites effectively paying a 10 per cent fee for bookings they receive via the website.

The investors who chose to back Campingninja ahead of 32 other businesses were Jane Dyson, Olly Brendon, of Attraction Tickets Direct, Paul Stanyer, of Holiday Taxis, and Chris Photi, of White Hart Associates.

"We had decided to pursue our big idea with or without winning the competition, but it was a major boost," said Geoff.