Britons are hitting the road—with caravans in tow

EVEN on a weekday in mid-September, plenty of punters are enjoying the sun at the Dacre Lakeside Park. Some 15 miles north of Hull, the lodges and “static” caravans are packed, and the touring caravans are squeezed in tight. Mark Mewburn, the owner, says that his park is nearly full all year and he has plans to expand. The traditional family business is farming. But the caravan park is more profitable. This is true for most of Britain’s 2,000-odd parks, and indeed the whole caravan industry. It is still dominated by British businesses, rare in manufacturing. Even more unusually, Brexit looks as though it might be a blessing.

Britain is now the largest market in Europe for touring caravans (pulled by cars). The industry suffered after the financial crash in 2008. Caravans were among the first big-ticket items to go in the credit crunch, but recently growth has returned. Britons spend £2.2bn ($3bn) a year on caravanning, up 4% on the previous year. Revenues and profits at leisure parks have risen similarly since 2013.

Britain’s happy campers have remained remarkably loyal to British-owned makers. Sales of touring caravans increased by 7% in the year to June, to 22,185; the stationary kind was up by 8% and motorhomes by 14%. Most will have been British-built, according to the National Caravan Council (NCC), a trade body. It is a rare example of British producers adapting to a changing market.

Their job has been made easier by the trend for “staycations” since the crash in 2008; once people’s finances improved they returned to buying caravans. The fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote has also discouraged foreign travel.

But the market has evolved in other ways, too. Once campers would have been lucky to get a plate of baked beans at a park. Mr Mewburn’s on-site restaurant serves such delights as blue cheese, walnut and Parma ham pizza. Alex Marshall of CIL, a consultancy, says that investors are pouring money into parks, especially posh ones.

Manufacturers are trying to meet these rising expectations. Swift, founded in 1964, is Britain’s largest caravan-maker. Like many of its competitors, the company is based near the port of Hull, a legacy of the industry’s early days when vehicles were built out of soft woods imported from Scandinavia. With sales increasing this year by 20%, Swift is no longer the cottage industry that it once was. The firm has invested £4m in a specially developed process to construct wall panels in just six minutes.

Caravanning remains a passion of the middle-aged and pensioners; one reason for the recent surge in sales was a change in rules in 2015 that allowed over-55s to cash in their pensions. Swift, however, has launched a smaller “Basecamp” caravan, aimed at younger customers. At just £15,000, Swift says it is so popular the company cannot meet demand from young holidaymakers. Who needs Ibiza?