Luxury RVs Are Changing The Travel Landscape

05.05.2024 - 05:35 / forbes.com

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.

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.

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.

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