Dutch Motorhomes

Yes, interesting.

You can twist figures to your own ends but taking the figures they give in the article – around £400,000,000 spent by Dutch travellers who have about half as many Motorcaravans as the UK.

Taking that as a ball park figure then with double the amount of Motorcaravans the UK Travellers would spend almost £800 million while travelling around.

That's a heck of a lot of money.

Motorhomers buy and burn more diesel when they are touring, and those who stay on campsites pay fees for them - but not all stay on campsites. Beyond that they buy food while they are away instead of buying food at home, and they heat a Motorhome instead of heating a whole house. £800 million of increased spending is fake news ! 

"The number of motorcaravans in the Netherlands has risen steadily over the past year and that is unlikely to change in the coming years. On 1 January 2017 there were 102,370 motorcaravans in the Netherlands i.e. the number of motorcaravan registrations had increased by 56%. Great Britain has 210,000 motorcaravans, France has 440,000, Germany 460,000 and Italy has 210,000. There are about 2 million motorcaravans in Europe and the Netherlands is in fifth place. There are over 100 makes of motorcaravans in the Netherlands. Hymer tops the list (19%), then come Dethleffs (8%), Bürstner (7%), Adria (7%) and Volkswagen/Knaus (5%) 98% of NKC members have a motorcaravan; on average a motorcaravan lasts about 11.2 years in the Netherlands. Motorcaravan owners tend to keep their vehicles for about 4.7 years before changing them; 9% contemplate having a new or different motorcaravan within a year. In 2016, Dutch campers spent 415 million Euros on their travels i.e. on average 55€ per camper per day, paying out mainly for fuel, overnight stays, food shopping, general shopping and restaurant meals. They spent most in France and Germany. Local communities in the Netherlands can hardly imagine life without the camping fraternity. Altogether camping tourists spend 182 million Euros in the Netherlands, 70 million of which comes from Dutch campers. 4% of campers undertake a three month-long trip although on average campers stay just three days on the same campsite before they take off again in their motorcaravan to explore further."

Interesting take! Twenty years ago when we bought our first motorcaravan, had caravans & campervans prior to this, we would find that we really were very much the novelty on CC sites. Today on C&MC sites we (British motorcaravaners) are pretty much on a par with the other variants involved in our pastime. Must add mind that may be partly down to the sites we use which tend to be more attractive to the motorcaravaning fraternity.