RV There Yet? Retirees Hit the Road with No Particular Place to Go




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RV There Yet? Retirees Hit the Road with No Particular Place to Go

By Aaron Cook, The Sidney Morning Herald

October 23, 2010

Australia

It is a lifestyle to make most desk-bound office workers dream of early retirement.

For six months each year Ray and Lorraine Gardner hit the road in their self-contained motorhome and visit some of Australia 's most beautiful sites. With no timetables and no deadlines, they go where they want, when they want, without ever leaving the comforts of home.

The Gardners , both 64 and retired, first bought a motorhome in 2005 and say the attraction of taking their home with them is obvious. ''It's just the freedom of being able to travel around the great country we live in,'' Mr Gardner said.

Although the tag ''grey nomads'' was coined more than a decade ago, new data shows nomad numbers are booming like never before.

The president of the Recreational Vehicle Manufacturers Association of Australia, Richard Raven, said the number of recreational vehicles built in Australia is expected to reach 24,000 in 2010, at least 5000 more than any other year. About 10 per cent of these are motorised, with the rest made up of caravans and camper-trailers, Mr Raven said.

A director of the Sydney RV Centre, Jeremy Pearce, said the high demand is partly a result of buyers who delayed their purchase during the global financial crisis. ''In the last two months we've had a huge increase in the number of buyers and inquiries - sales are up 100 per cent on the same month last year,'' he said.

There is a waiting period of nearly six months for some popular motorhome models and Mr Pearce expects demand to remain high as more baby boomers retire.

A spokesman for the Campervan and Motorhome Club of Australia , Gary Rebgetz, questioned whether local councils are ready to cash in on the boom. A report prepared by Balfour Consulting for the club found that some tourists actively avoid towns that do not supply suitable rest areas.

More than one in four motorhome tourists surveyed in Queensland had experienced trouble getting into rest areas and caravan parks because of over-crowding and lack of availability, according to the report.

The general manager of Albury City Council, Les Tomich, said many councils were not prepared for the expected surge in the number of motorhome tourists, and needed to install more basic sites where motorhome owners could dump waste and use power and water.

However the chief executive of the Caravan, RV and Accommodation Industry of Australia, Ben Yates, warned that new rest areas would represent unfair competition if they did not comply with all of the regulations that apply to caravan parks.

The grey nomads

An estimated 330,000 recreational vehicles are registered.

About 70,000 are on the road at any one time. About 10 per cent are motorised.

Motorhome tourists holiday for more than six months on average and spend more than $500 per week.

Annual sales of recreational vehicles rose from about 5000 in the mid 1990s to about 19,000 in 2007. In 2010 sales are expected to top 24,000.

Australia has about 2500 caravan parks, with more than 200,000 sites.