Luxury RVs Are Changing The Travel Landscape

RVs have come a long way since they first emerged in the early 1900s and while many more people are increasingly choosing RVs to travel, it is the luxury RV landscape that is changing the travel market—now travelers can escape to the most deserted place on the planet (if accessible by road) with everything they need, from a rooftop disco to a concierge service.

What Is The History Of The RV?

The history of the RV is as old as the car, inspired possibly by the idea of the Roma caravans that traveled Europe in the 1800s. Although camping became more common from the mid 1800s onwards, it was the birth of the car that encouraged more campers and the first RV was tacked onto a car in 1904—it could sleep four adults on bunks and had lighting, an icebox and a radio.

Car owners continued to add on larger and larger contraptions, but it wasn’t until 1910 that the first commercial RV, Pierce-Arrow’s Touring Landau, appeared at Madison Square Garden—fitted with a chamber pot toilet, a foldable back seat that turned into a bed and a telephone to connect the driver with the passengers.

From then on, auto campers, as they were called, were rolling off several company’s production lines and by the roaring twenties they were quite big—think REO’s ‘Speed wagon bungalow’ and Hudson-Essex’s ‘Pullman Coach.’

It’s a trend that grew as people began visiting National Parks more and many of the leading entrepreneurs rolling out RVs were keen users themselves—think Henry Ford and Wally Byam, the founder of Airstream, whose brand became ubiquitous in the RV world in the 1990s/2000s.

After the Great Depression and the lean years after World War II, many RVs were used as inexpensive homes and/or cheap ways to travel. With the launch of the Winnebago in 1967 and increasing stretches of interstate highways, RVs gained a mass-market appeal.

Can RVs Be Luxury?

RVs had a similar trajectory to houses and have always followed modern technology—as something new came on the market, it was always added to a new make or model of an RV, whether that was a fridge, an oven, a microwave, garbage disposal, washers, dryers, showers or a satellite dish.

It makes sense because the reason people use RVs is because they want to travel but taking all the modern conveniences they have at home; as houses became more luxurious, so did RVs.

How Is Luxury RV Travel Different From Typical RV Travel?

One of the main differences in how luxury RVs differ from normal RV travel is in how luxury RVs are built and how they allow their residents to move around, without struggling for space. Imagine state-of-the-art technology and devices, well-designed floor plans (meaning everyone feels like they have enough space) and a sleeping area that is well-removed from other parts of the RV.

It’s all about how someone feels inside too—meaning passive underfloor heating, lots of hot water, large refrigerators, walk-in showers, and handcrafted solid countertops.

Luxury RVs traditionally think about how its owners interact with the outdoors they are seeking to experience, so there’s likely large panoramic windows that let travelers feel closer to nature. They might also allow off-grid living and merge sustainable-living features like off-grid energy production, LED lights, fresh water treatment, and indoor air quality purifiers. It’s common for luxury RVs to come with solar panels on the roof.

Mobile connectivity is of the utmost importance too—luxury RVs will always be connected to the internet in any location, unless they choose not to be, with wifi boosters to use around the outside of the RV too. Some luxury RV owners might also pay for a monthly subscription for a concierge service to help out when travel plans go awry.

What Does Luxury RV Travel Look Like?

Luxury RV travel is elegant, having everything to hand that one could want, including the ability to be able to block out everything that a traveler might not want—people, noise, light, and crowds.

Luxury RVs come with a price tag though—ranging from anywhere from $40,000 to $1 million, depending on your view of luxury—although some luxury RVs can cost much, much more. The two-storey, 732 square-feet EleMMent Palazzo Superior, for instance, is one of the most luxurious RVs available. It has adjustable sun protection that darkens the glass as necessary and a 68-foot, automated rooftop Sky Lounge with a sound system to match any night club. Only a handful exist and no one knows the exact cost, but it is estimated to be around €3 million.

Other very luxury RVs may be a little more reasonable. The $2.5 million Featherlite Vantare Platinum Plus has an in-built treadmill and gym and the $1.6 million Newell Coach p50 has a Porsche-designed interior.

What Are Luxury RV Destinations?

In the early 1900s, drivers would take their RVs to places that had everything typically associated with a holiday—a golf course, restaurants, the sea. Since the pandemic, many RV travelers now choose to spend time in places that are far from crowds, cities and amenities and clearly, luxury RV travelers have the large kitchens required to cook in and entertain.

The bigger the RV, though, the harder it might be to find somewhere to park it overnight or over several days. Lonely Planet has a list of wonderful national parks for RVs across the U.S., chosen for the quantity and quality of RV campsites within the parks but also because they offer RVs a lot of access to tour the parks on large, paved roads and where it’s easy to see the park attractions from the roadside.

How Many People Participate In RV Luxury Travel?

Since the pandemic and the rise of remote working, normal RV use has exploded as it allows digital nomads to travel for bleisure. During the pandemic, there was a 16% increase in RVs shipped out to new owners across the U.S. and it’s believed that 11 million households have a normal RV in the U.S.

Since Covid, luxury RV sales have also increased by a staggering 143%, as travelers effectively paid to distance themselves from large resorts and crowds of people.

Is The Number Of Luxury RV Travelers Expected To Increase?

The number of people using RVs is increasing generally across the market. According to the RV Industry Association, RV ownership has been increasing steadily for the past decade with 18-to-34-year-olds making up 22% of the market. In 2022, the median age of a first time RV buyer was 32, down from 41 just a few years earlier—a trend driven by an increase in remote working. The RV market has also been driven by babyboomers entering retirement and wanting to travel in an RV. Both of these trends suggest that the RV market is likely to increase, plus there are more places welcoming RVs now, across the U.S.

It also fits with Pinterest’s Summer 2024 Travel report where amongst a staggering one billion travel-related searches and over 10 billion travel saves between February 2023 and February 2024, the site saw searches for a ‘quiet life’ increasing by 530% over the same time period, underpinning a need for simplicity and calm, two other popular and increasing search terms on Pinterest.