Why it’s Better To Hire a Campervan Than a Standard Car

Think about most of the vacations you have taken in your life. If you were travelling in your own country, it is likely you set out to explore in your own vehicle, and booked accommodations at hotels. But if you were travelling somewhere you could not bring your own automobile, you probably rented a standard car and once again booked hotel stays as usual.

But is that really the most efficient way to travel—or the most cost-effective or enjoyable?

It does not occur to a lot of people to consider hiring a campervan or similar vehicle such as a motorhome or 4WD camper instead of hiring a standard car on vacation, but doing so can actually save you a lot of money and hassle.

That might not be obvious at first, because it may seem less expensive to just reserve a car than it is to book a campervan or motorhome (though this is not true nearly so often as you might believe).

But travelling in a rented campervan or 4WD camper saves you money in other ways, and ultimately those cost-savings can add up in a huge way over the course of your trip. Let’s take a look at all of the advantages of hiring a campervan over a standard car—financial and otherwise!

1. You do not have to pay for hotel accommodations.

When it comes to cost savings, this advantage is huge. Renting a campervan really is not all that expensive. You can hire a low top model for around $30 a day, or a high top model for around $40-$60.

Now think what you would pay if you were to hire a car and pay for a hotel room every night! Just the cost of the hotel room alone may be double or triple the cost of a campervan rental—maybe even more.

To take a simple example, picture that a campervan would cost you $30 a day, and that a standard car would cost you the same amount (which is typical—some cars may cost less and others more, but generally speaking the cost is often comparable). Now picture that a hotel will cost you $100 a night.

A car plus hotel in this case would cost you $130 per day, whereas the campervan by itself would only run you $30.

Why pay $100 extra per day for a vacation when you do not have to?

Just imagine what you could do with $100 per day saved on your trip. If you were initially planning a week in Australia, that would add up to $700 in savings.

You could put some of that money toward enjoying special tours and experiences that you otherwise would not have been able to afford. Or you could just use it to extend your trip, spending even more time exploring Australia’s amazing Outback.

Or just hold onto it for some later date. Maybe you can set it aside in savings for your next Australian road trip.

Either way, you are probably going to save a lot of cash just on hotel costs alone.

2. You can stay directly at campgrounds in Australia’s beautiful national parks, giving you more time to explore.

There is another inconvenience that comes with having to stay in a hotel, and that is that you are always going to be some distance away from the attractions you have come to see in the first place.

Say for example you want to explore a particular national park. If you are booking a stay at a hotel, that could put you half an hour to an hour away, maybe even more. When you wake up that morning, you need to do all that driving just to get to the park you want to check out in the first place. You lose precious time, and you also wind up draining energy, so you feel fatigued and end up doing less with your day. And in the evening, you have to waste even more time driving back to your hotel.

Now picture the alternative—a trip in a campervan. Instead of parking an hour away and staying in a hotel, you park inside the national park at a gorgeous campground. When you go to sleep that night, you are already immersed in its beauty. When you wake up in the morning, you are refreshed and ready to explore. And the trails are right there waiting for you at your doorstep.

Now that is a luxurious way to travel. That is how you see and do more on your trip!

3. You can get away from the crowds.

With a campervan, you also open up new avenues of exploration. You no longer need to worry about finding a hotel, and technically you can sleep anywhere so long as you find a place you can park.

That means you can venture deep into the Outback, away from civilization and the crowds that flock around Australia’s best known destinations. You can journey off the beaten path and discover sights that most tourists miss—all in seclusion and comfort.

4. You can prepare your own meals instead of spending all your money at restaurants.

Just as hotels are a huge drain on your wallet while travelling, so are restaurants. Eating out two or three times a day can quickly add up a lot even for a single traveller. You could easily cut your food expenses in half or more if you rent a campervan. You will probably have a sink, a fridge/freezer, and maybe even a microwave.

That means to some extent, you can prepare your own meals. You can also store leftovers from restaurants, which can make eating out a lot more economical. If you were staying in hotels, a lot of that food would just go to waste.

5. You have less packing, unpacking, and hauling to do with your luggage.

If there is one thing which is a total pain on vacation, it is hauling around luggage, dragging it back and forth between the hotel and your rental car. Each time you do, you have to unpack and repack, and make sure you have not left anything behind. You can eliminate all of that trouble with a campervan, because your luggage stays in one place through your entire trip.

6. Save time and hassle planning your trip.

Being on vacation is fun, and hopefully relatively carefree—but planning a trip is often the furthest thing from fun or carefree.

If you do not enjoy administrative tasks or excel at them, it can take up a huge amount of time and effort trying to get everything squared away with car reservations, hotel bookings, tours, and so on. And the more complexities are involved, the more likely it is you will make a mistake.

With a campervan rental, you do not have to deal with hotel bookings. You can keep your trip schedule a lot more open and flexible. Because you are not a captive to the demands of a set-in-stone schedule, you can be spontaneous with how you explore. This also eliminates a lot of stress while you are on vacation, which goes back to keeping things carefree!

7. You get the sense of travelling in a “home away from home.”

One of the best things about a campervan vacation in Australia is that while you are touring this beautiful land, you are doing so in a space which for that time period is all yours.

Instead of going from one hotel room to the next, never quite settling comfortably anywhere, you get to wake up each morning and go to sleep each night in the same cosy vehicle. The scenery through your windows changes every day, and each day brings new adventures—but through all that, your campervan starts to feel like your very own home away from home.

Once you decide to hire a campervan instead of a standard car for a vacation in Australia, you will never look back. Campervans are scarcely more expensive than hired cars overall, and in many cases may even be just as affordable. Meanwhile, you save on hotels and food, and you remove all kinds of issues relating to planning, luggage and scheduling. Your campervan liberates you from the hassles of travel, freeing you to enjoy every minute of your Australian vacation to the fullest.