Enjoy a month camping holiday, offer eleven months the “Wohni”, i.e. mobile home or caravan, to other travelers. That’s a pretty business-savvy and also sustainable idea.
Experience has shown that the domicile on wheels is just sitting around uselessly between vacations for most of the year, in the barn, in the garden or in front of the house. From time to time the vehicle is aired, swept, checked and even moved back and forth. That’s often it until the next vacation. It is not used or inhabited, at most by a few spiders who have made themselves comfortable inside.
This forced break for such a comparatively expensive vehicle is actually a pity. Because the demand for caravans and mobile homes is particularly high at the moment. A survey by the Allensbach Institute revealed that the number of camping fans in Germany has increased by more than two million newcomers to 13.6 million in the last two years alone.
Camping has been a trend close to nature for years, but the corona pandemic has once again significantly increased the desire to camp. A glance at the number of new motorhome registrations shows this. In 2021, the caravaning industry association counted 81,420 new mobile homes, which represents an increase of 4.3 percent compared to the previous year and a new record result.
In the last four years, new motorhome registrations in Germany have more than doubled. A total of around 1.6 million leisure vehicles, i.e. mobile homes and caravans, are registered in Germany.
For the first six months of 2022, the caravanning industry recorded the second-best result in its history with 55,202 new registrations, despite massive problems in production and delivery caused by the lack of availability of materials and components. “The trend towards individual, natural holidays started long before the pandemic and will continue to influence the travel behavior of many people in the future,” says Daniel Onggowinarso, Managing Director of the Caravaning Industry Association.
So campers have a good chance of getting their vehicle rented out. They can use sharing platforms to refinance the maintenance costs or even the purchase of their camper.
There are now more and more such sharing services, which also see a large market in this: like Yescapa.de, which incidentally has also just taken over the German business of fellow provider ShareaCamper, Paulcamper.de or Indiecampers.de.
The new camper sharing platform Goboony.de connects vacationers with mobile home owners. On the Airbnb-inspired platform, owners can list their vehicle for free and travelers can in turn choose the motorhome that suits them from the fleet.
The earning potential for landlords is between 500 and 1500 euros per week – depending on the season, age of the mobile home and number of beds. The host sets the prices himself.
The new sharing platform Campspace.com/de goes one step further. It is aimed at private individuals who like to camp, but not only on the often cramped and regulated campsites. There you often only look at the neighboring caravans instead of nature.
On the platform, private individuals can offer their piece of land by the water, their tree hut, yurt or the pasture next to the farm for a few nights according to the motto “Welcome to my garden”.
There is a lot of interest because campers tend to stay in their own country. Tim Aster, founder and managing director of camper rental Hannes Camper, is observing a continuing trend towards holidays on the doorstep despite the lack of corona requirements. “Again this year, around two-thirds of our guests are not planning their camping holiday in other European countries, but mostly only 300 kilometers away from their own place of residence,” he notes.
The entrepreneur also clearly sees one reason in the rise in fuel and energy prices: “That automatically means that you have to weigh things up when choosing a travel destination.” And that’s usually in the nearest beautiful meadow.
The summer holidays are just around the corner – they have even started in six federal states. In view of the chaos at the airports and overcrowded trains, many Germans rely on their cars. But there is also a lot to consider.
Source: WORLD / Max Seib