Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Alternatives to hiring a campervan from Britz

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By Tim Ahern


If you're looking to hire a campervan or motorhome in Australia, then you can guarantee that in your search, you will come across the company "Britz". However, before your commit to hiring anything from them, great as they are, you should at least consider some of the 60 alternative companies in the market. Below you can find out about some other well known, and not so well known alternatives.

Britz is clearly the dominant player in the Australian campervan hire market. Not only due to their own brand of vehicles, but through their extended family of Kea, Maui and Mighty Campers as well. The biggest competitor to them is Apollo Campervans, which is the largest privately owned brand in Australia. It consists of Apollo Campervans, Cheapa Campa and Hippy Campers. Apollo offers a very similar price and experience to Britz and so any research in to campervan hire in Australia should definitely look in to what Apollo are offering. The 3 aforementioned brands from Apollo cater to three different target markets of Superior, Mid range and budget respectively.

If you are researching the budget camper market you will inevitably find the aforementioned Hippy and Mighty campers, however, you are also likely to come across Wicked Campers too. Wicked are a leading force in the budget campervan hire market world wide and Australia is no exception. They have a reputation of being unreliable, breaking down a lot and not really helping out in these situations. However, at the same time they have grown to be a mammoth company with depots world wide and a massive Facebook following. So, enough travellers must be happy with them to warrant this kind of expansion and love. If you are a bit worried about this reputation, then try looking at Travellers Autobarn and Awesome Campers as alternatives. Travellers Autobarn has been around since 1993 and over the last few years has been winning a plethora of awards for their service (as voted by users). Awesome has been expanding rapidly over the last couple of years suggesting that they are doing a lot of things right by their customers. They are both worth looking further in to.

But it is really the mid to luxury range that Britz caters for. So, ignoring the Apollo range of alternatives for the moment, what else is there in the market? Well one player that is worth researching is Around Australia Motorhomes. With all their vehicles being top-of-the-line Winnebago's, AAM is squarely aimed at the traveller who is more interested in comfort than budget. Family owned, it is small enough to care about each customer, but large enough to cater for their needs. If luxury is you, then make sure that Around Australia Motorhomes is included in you research.

Another mid-range company worth mentioning is Energi Motorhomes. This company has been creeping up in reputation for some time. They don't seem to have a massive marketing machine so don't seem to come up regularly in Google searches (unless you are specifically looking for them), but they are worth the effort to look in to. Alternatively, if you are looking around at web sites that give booking results for multiple companies, then keep searching until you find a site that includes a price for Energi in the results. Until you include these guys in your search results you are not looking at the best field of options.

Additionally, in the mid range price market, keep an eye out for Camperman Campervans. Recently they have been becoming a major player in a market that is full of also-rans. They have been one of the fastest growing companies in the mid to upper price-range, offering new vehicles that fit nicely in to the market. Whilst they are definitely pushing their new vehicles, they are still holding on to some of the older ones that they had when they were smaller. With these older vehicles, they can still tap in to the cheaper end market too. They have bases up the whole length of the east coast of Australia and so they offer quite an alternative to Britz and the other major players that are in this market segment.

So in the event you are looking to rent a campervan, motorhome or RV in Australia, keep in mind there are a myriad of alternatives to Britz Campervans. There have only been a handful mentioned here, but in Sydney alone, there are 30 campervan hire companies to hire from. To only compare prices of Britz vehicles, and their other brands, is to sell yourself short. Make sure when you are researching campervan hire prices, that you find a website that brings up at least 20 companies in it's search results, or you are likely to not get the best priced vehicle or the best service.




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