Renting out a campervan

klim

Just wonder whether anyone has any experience with this, or any possible pearls of wisdom?

I've got the chance to own a well kitted out campervan due to a family member looking to sell (and beneficial family rates etc). Our first thought was for personal use as we are away for a lot of weekends, but there seems to be a fairly good market in camper van rentals.....

Rates seem to range from around £300-£400 per week off peak up to anything around £700-£800 per week for peak season. It seems like a good thing to me, I would imagine the potential complication etc being similar to renting out a property - really comes down to having sufficient insurance in place?

Brainstorm
Insurance of the van for the person driving/in charge
Relevant breakdown cover
Logistics of ensuring that the hirers car is safe and secure
Ensuring the hirer doesn't run off with the van!
What to do in the event that the can returns not in the same condition

Does anyone have any other thoughts to help out a whirring mind? Would be much appreciated. :beer:

Benthosboy

Having owned campervans for many years, and having worked as a warden and a manager at caravan parks, my experience is that rented 'vans generally suffer badly. By and large, people who rent them don't really care too much about them because they don't own them. If they get damaged, well, so what?

I used to work at a park near Oban and we had a lot of rented 'vans passing through, mainly people who were touring the west coast of Scotland. Many of them were regulars, in a vehicular sense, and it was painfully obvious that they didn't get looked after. I've seen 'vans less than one year old with lots of damage, mainly superficial body stuff but there all the same. There's also the problem of unseen damage caused by a lack of experience with driving larger vehicles. Many's the time I've seen them bumped over kerbs because the "driver" had no idea of the size of the 'van.

And sadly, charging more doesn't seem to work either. Having money to burn doesn't equate to having an ability to drive what is a much bigger vehicle than your average family saloon. And yes, I appreciate that there are some drive gods on this forum, but take it somewhere else please :mad:

Martyn.

klim

Some sickeningly fair points there Martyn. I'm someone who's very particular about mine and anyone elses property, and I know it would drive me up the wall to be dealing with people that don't treat things the same way - intentional or not. It obviously wouldn't take too much damage being done to fully counter any monies made...

Dollardog

I think the insurance might be a bit of a problem.

I was offered the loan of a camper van from a camper van hire company. The van I was going to borrow was not on their main hire fleet, it was an older one that had been taken in as a trade in, it was being lent to me as a favour and all I had to pay was the insurance.
In the end I couldn't have it as we were unable to get insurance on it. The hire company would have had to have put it on their books for 6 months for them to insure it for us and we couldn't get insurance on it as we didn't own it.