Going to overseas trip is an exciting experience. However, there will always be a first time when we are not sure what to do. For an example, there will be a firs time when we need to book a car or a campervan. We would like to share our experience so that you will know what to expect before starting to book.

Providers

In general, booking a campervan is no different with booking a normal car. The main difference is campervan has more features that we need to consider. Like booking a normal car rental, we should search as early as possible for benefit of getting possibly cheaper rate and also to ensure that cars are not fully booked.

When searching a campervan we can start from big brand in the respective country. In New Zealand here are some well known Campervan provider.

• Apollo
• Jucy
• Britz
• Maui
• Wilderness
• Wicked Campers

We only have first hand experience booking campervan with Apollo, Britz (in Australia) and Cruisine (only available in Australia). But we strongly believe the booking process and tips for selecting campervan features should be applicable in other providers as well.

Although searching can be done directly in the respective provider website, sometime it is easier to search using aggregator website. The one we have used is vroomvroomvroom. This aggregator will search accross several providers which is very useful to get the best offer in one place.

Features

Like normal car, campervan have features and much more features. Here we would like to list some important feature that can help you make decision what to book.

Capacity

Campervan capacity is the first one you should decide before anything else. The unit of campervan capacity is called as “berth”. Usually there will be different campervan from the smallest 2 berth campervan to maximum 6 berth campervan that can hold 2 person to 6 person respectively. We haven’t seen any rented campervan that can fit more than 6 person because it will need a very huge car.

Although you can’t rent 2 berth campervan if you are going to travel as more than 2 person, but you always can rent larger capacity campervan if you wish. As an example, in our New Zealand road trip, we drove 6 berth campervan although we are only 2 person. But of course, larger campervan has higher rental price.

Car Feature

Since campervan is also a car, we also can choose normal car feature at the time of booking:

• Transmission type (auto or manual)
• Fuel type (petrol or diesel)

Self Contained

Do you want to really roam freely without having to go to hotel or paid campground? Then you need to rent a self contained campervan. Usually a campervan can be considered as self contained if it has a toilet and grey water container. Having a toilet will ensure the traveler is not going to pollute the nature when they need to poo or pee. Having a gray water container will ensure no dirty water streaming out of the car and damaging the environment. Only self contained campervan is allowed to stay overnight in most free campground in New Zealand.

In Summary, self contained campervan must have this facilities:

• Toilet
• Gray Water Container

This optional feature is also helpful to ensure full freedom of comfort camping:

• Shower
• Water Heater

Kitchen

There will be not much food vendor if you are road tripping in the national park. Hence it is important to have well function kitchen. Here are some important kitchen feature that is available in some campervan:

• Sink
• Stove
• Microwave
• Toaster
• Electric Water Boiler
• Fridge
• Cutleries

As an Asian, we also need rice cooker which unfortunately we have never seen available in all of our campervan rental experience. Therefore, ensure to bring yourself if you need one.

Miscellaneous

There are some good to have features that will make your comfort camping might become a luxury camping:

• Indoor heater
• TV
• Radio
• Awning

So when searching ensure to check the feature that you will really need so that you can get filtered accurate result before committing to book one of it.

Booking

You can start booking by searching the travel date and campervan feature. Then select one of the result and proceeding with providing personal details.

Personal Details

The personal details need to be provided, mainly is personal contact such as name, phone number and address. We also need to provide driving license number. Please ensure to check that you can use your driving license in your destination country or else get an international driving permit.

Payment

The last stage of booking process usually is payment. Most of providers accept common credit card. For payment amount, we can choose to pay full or just deposit and pay the rest when picking up the campervan. Usually campervan provider will give small discount if we pay full during booking.

Insurance

Also usually to choose in payment stage, we need to choose which insurance option to take. Without insurance at all means we will liable for larger amount of money. The more expensive the insurance, the policy will be more expensive but our liability can be down to $0. Also check if your travel insurance has a cover for rental as well so that you are not over buying unnecessary insurance.

After completing the payment, we will get confirmation shortly and usually the things left to do is to pickup the car on our travel date.

Leave some comments below for your booking experience and happy campervanning.