Visitors wanting to make reservations at state-owned campsites and cabins will soon be able to do so via a single Web site and a toll-free number, a massive coalescing of South Carolina tourism sales that promises to generate millions of dollars for government coffers.

The State Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism will also roll out a new set of prices for its overnight facilities, elevating rates for peak travel months and reducing fees for mid-winter and mid-summer.

PRT predicts that the changes will increase occupancy at the state's 233 cabins and 3,000 campsites from 53 percent to 61 percent, a 15 percent swell. The department is hoping for a similar boost in revenue from the facilities, which totaled $9 million last year, although it is making no predictions on that front.

"This is an extremely big deal," said Phil Gaines, South Carolina's assistant director of state parks. "It is literally a culture change for both the parks service and our guests who have been accustomed to doing things a certain way for a long time."

Historically, each of the state's 46 state parks handled overnight reservations directly. Each had its own phone number -- 46 in all. There were no Web reservations and reservations were taken only during office hours. Moreover, directors of a full campground could not check availability at another site.

But all that is changing in a few weeks, when PRT's booking system is taken over by ReserveAmerica, a unit of InterActiveCorp, a New York-based company that owns Expedia, the Home Shopping Network and Ticketmaster. Gov. Mark Sanford's office said it is the "largest and most dramatic example of public/private partnerships in the state park service."

Would-be guests will be able to book South Carolina campsites and cabins at 866-345-7275 on Feb. 16 or at Reserveamerica.com on Feb. 23. InterActiveCorp, which beat out two other bidders for the five-year PRT contract, will earn $1.50 per campsite reservation and $3.75 per cabin booking. Traditionally, guests paid PRT $1 to reserve a campsite and cabin bookings were free.

PRT will also start altering prices on its overnight facilities March 1 to better reflect hotel room rates, which fluctuate 25 to 30 percent depending on the month. A cabin at Edisto Beach State Park, for example, will rent for $90 in October and $50 in January, as opposed to $78 year-round.

Campsites now rent for $11 to $25 a night and cabins go for $30 to $135. The new rates are still being worked out.

Public lodgings and campgrounds have been slow to offer online booking and central reservation systems. North Carolina, which garners almost $200 million from its state-park overnight facilities, still does things the old-fashioned way when it comes to bookings. But governments are farming out reservation duties at a fast pace. ReserveAmerica now handles bookings for 12 states, including Florida, and the national park and forest services. It manages 3.5 million reservations a year and 400,000 people pull up its Web site every day.

Colorado has been doing business with ReserveAmerica since 1991 and 40 percent of its park reservations are now made on the company's Web site.

"We've had our ups and downs, but certainly the service we've had with them has been good," said Dave Hause, chief of field services for Colorado parks.

Georgia hired Maryland-based Spherix to handle its parks booking about two years ago, according to Kim Hatcher, a spokeswoman for Peach State parks. Hatcher could not say whether the change increased bookings or revenue, but that was the intention.

Gaines said the PRT intended to hire a private-sector company to handle reservations for some time, but the department first needed to update its computer systems across all of its parks. It was also waiting for Web-booking companies to iron out some kinks.

"There was some natural apprehension to changing a system that worked," Gaines said. "And when we did it, we wanted to go first-class."

PRT Director Chad Prosser said ReserveAmerica will do a more thorough job of marketing state properties. To book through the Web site, would-be travelers will have to hand over a fair amount of personal information, which will help build an extensive database for state tourism promoters to work with.

"It will be much easier for us to drive demand," Prosser said. "We'll be able to cross-sell people on properties they might not have seen before."

Gaines said ReserveAmerica's technology, expertise and marketing savvy will far outweigh any savings PRT could have realized by setting up a central reservation system on its own.

"It's really going to pay for us in the long run," Gaines said. "A year from now, we'll all wonder how in the world did we ever do without this system."