Record 86,625* visitors at the Caravan, Camping & Motorhome Show 17 – 22 February 2015
- 2,420* more visitors to the show than in 2014
- Record sales for many exhibitors
- Exciting new products launched, from glamping tents to campervans
The UK’s largest start-of-season holiday showcase, The Caravan, Camping & Motorhome Show, kicked the year off in style with nearly 87,000* people visiting Birmingham NEC across the six day event. This was a record for this show since NCC Events ran its first spring show at the NEC in 2012. TV’s Ben Fogle and Matt Baker opened the show, which had more than 350 exhibitors across five halls.
The show aims to bring new entrants into the leisure vehicle and camping market and this year it was strengthened by the new industry promotional campaign ‘Freedom to Go’ which is supported by both The Caravan Club and The Camping and Caravanning Club. ‘Freedom to Go’ aims to inspire the public to experience a leisure vehicle holiday for themselves.
‘Freedom to Go’ was bought to life at the show in the form of an inspirational visitor feature encouraging newcomers to put themselves ‘in the picture’ of the many lifestyle options that owning a leisure vehicle can offer. Visitors could be photographed either in a winter inspired area, on a festival stage or at the beach in an oversized deckchair. Over 8,000 photographs were uploaded to the ‘Freedom to Go’ website for people to download after the show and web traffic to freedomtogo.co.uk increased by over 30% during show time.
Saturday was the busiest day of the show, with just shy of 20,000* people through the doors and attendance was strong throughout, with each individual day seeing more visitors than in 2014.
Exhibitors reported strong trading across a range of products, with some selling out completely. Sales of Swift’s touring caravans and motorhomes were up on last year’s show. PJ Outdoors benefitted from at show activity 20% up on 2014, with inflatable air tents proving particularly popular. And in the holiday homes sector optimism was widespread, with Willerby having a five-year sales high at the 2015 show.
Interactive feature areas, including an assault course and cycle challenge, went down well with the crowds and the Experts’ Theatre featured a packed programme of sessions, from practical caravanning tips, to fashion advice from Kate Lawler, talks from celebrities including Sally Gunnell and cooking with Ben Tish all compered by adventurer Richard Harpham.
Plenty of new products debuted at the show too, including The Camping and Caravanning Club’s new Ready Camp glamping product, coachbuilt motorhomes from Benimar and Moto-Trek, campervans from Wild-Ax and Wellhouse Leisure and new caravans from manufacturers such as Lunar.
Andrew Whalley, Managing Director of NCC Events, said: “I am delighted that such a bumper audience attended The Caravan, Camping & Motorhome Show 2015. It was the busiest ever since we began organising the event in 2012 and the atmosphere in the halls was electric. With double digit growth for 2014 new caravan sales and motorhome registrations, this increase in visitor numbers is reflective of how buoyant the market currently is.
“If you factor in the attendance at our Motorhome & Caravan Show 2014 then we have welcomed more than 180,000 people to our two events in the last five months and with interest in our sector, boosted by ‘Freedom to Go’, continuing to rise, it bodes well for the year ahead, roll on October!”
NCC Events’ second consumer exhibition, The Motorhome & Caravan Show 2015, will return from 13 – 18 October at the NEC and tickets go on sale in the spring.
March 12, 2015
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