Campervan pricing: seasons, minimum hire, one-way and relocations

By the DayRunner team · 7 November 2026

Price campervans by season, berth size and hire length, then add rules for minimum hire, one-way trips and relocations. Set your seasons from your own weekly utilisation, protect peak weeks with a minimum hire, and charge one-way fees by direction, so the trips that strand your fleet pay for the trip back. Campervan pricing lives or dies on where your vans end up, not only on the nightly rate.

A note on our data

Rate Pulse doesn't have campervan rates yet. It covers car hire at 18 airports, and campervans are planned. So there's no market data in this guide. Every number below is hypothetical, to show the method. Your own booking export is the data that matters here.

How campervans differ from cars

• Hires are longer. A week or two is normal. A 2-night hire is a cost, not a win.
• Seasons are sharper. The gap between peak and low can be much wider than for cars.
• Turnarounds are slower. A van needs a proper clean, a check of the kitchen, bedding and gas, and often a dump of the tanks.
• Trips go one way. Customers fly into one city and out of another. Your fleet drifts.
• Extras are a big share of revenue. Bedding, kitchen kits, tables and chairs, and excess reduction. See ancillary revenue.

The method

1. Set season bands from your own data

   Sort last year's weeks by utilisation, then group them.

2. Build a berth ladder

   Price each van size as a multiple of your most common one.

3. Set minimum hire by season

   Longest in peak, shortest in low.

4. Add hire-length discounts, but not in peak

   Reward long hires when you need them.

5. Price one-way trips by direction

   Charge for the trips that move vans the wrong way.

6. Plan relocations

   Decide in advance which vans move, how, and at what cost.

Step 1: seasons from your own utilisation

Don't use the calendar. Use last year's fleet utilisation by week, for each depot.

Take a hypothetical 30-van fleet:

Shoulder is the base. A 4-berth at NZ$200 a night in shoulder is NZ$320 in peak and NZ$130 in low.

Split each depot. A van in a southern depot in winter and a van in a northern depot in winter can sit in different bands. See shoulder season.

Step 2: the berth ladder

Most fleets have three or four van sizes. Set each as a multiple of your most common one.

Check it every season. If the 6-berths sell out first every year, the step is too small.

Step 3: minimum hire by season

This is where campervan fleets make or lose the most money.

Say you have a 4-berth in peak at NZ$320 a night. It's booked for 14 nights from 2 January, and a 14-night hire is waiting from 19 January. A 3-night hire for 16 to 19 January fits the gap neatly. Fine.

Now take a 4-berth that's free for the first three weeks of January. A 3-night hire comes in early for 8 to 11 January. A week later, a customer asks for 14 nights from 3 to 17 January. It doesn't fit. Unless someone else fills the gaps either side, you earn NZ$960 from 3 nights instead of NZ$4,480 from 14.

A minimum rental length stops that. A hypothetical set:

Allow gap-fillers by exception. Inside 14 days of pick-up, a short hire that fits an existing gap exactly is pure gain. Release it then, not months ahead.

Step 4: hire-length discounts

Long hires cut your turnaround costs and fill the calendar. In low and shoulder, reward them:

In peak, the van will sell anyway. Don't give the discount away. See length of rental.

Step 5: one-way fees by direction

Start with a count. For last year, by month, how many hires picked up in each depot and dropped off in each other depot?

In January, 70 vans went south and 25 came north. Christchurch gained 45 vans that month. Auckland lost 45.

So in January:

• Auckland to Christchurch is the expensive direction. Charge a one-way fee that covers most of the cost of bringing a van back.
• Christchurch to Auckland helps you. Charge little or nothing, or even discount it.

In the months when the flow reverses, flip the fees. The full method is in one-way and relocation pricing.

Step 6: relocations

You'll still end up with vans in the wrong place. You have three ways to move them:

• Staff drive. Fast and certain, but expensive.
• Relocation deal. A traveller takes the van at a token rate, within a set number of days. Cheap, but slower and less certain.
• Leave it. Sometimes the next season's flow brings it back for free.

Worked comparison, all hypothetical, for one van from Christchurch to Auckland:

The deal saves about NZ$955 a van. But the van takes five days instead of two, and it might not get booked at all. Use deals for vans you need in a week or more. Use staff drives for vans with a paying hire waiting.

Bake the expected relocation cost into your one-way fee. If half the vans that go south in January need a relocation deal back, the one-way fee for that direction should cover at least half of NZ$525, plus the risk of a staff drive.

A pricing sheet you can copy

Checklist

• Last year's weekly utilisation pulled, per depot
• Season bands set from it, not the calendar
• Berth ladder set and checked against sell-out order
• Minimum hire set for each band, with a gap-filler rule inside 14 days
• Hire-length discounts switched off in peak
• One-way flow counted by month and direction
• One-way fees set to cover relocation cost in the busy direction
• Relocation cost worked out for staff drives and deals

For more on running a campervan fleet with data, see campervans. If you want forecasting and rate rules built on your own booking system, that's what we do in revenue management.

Questions