Campervan Village vs Cruisin Motorhomes

Both companies run eight model lines, neither publishes a vehicle count, and both hire from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Cairns and Perth. Past those five cities the maps diverge. Campervan Village adds Adelaide and Darwin, matching all seven cities this site prices; Cruisin’s sixth branch is Hobart, its home city since 1999 and by far its largest review sample, but one this site’s live search does not yet price, so a Tasmanian loop is a booking you make with Cruisin rather than a comparison you can run here. The fleets behind the maps sit further apart than the overlap suggests. Campervan Village dates to a 2016 Queensland company registration, runs from Brisbane in the same corporate group as Wicked Campers, and stretches from a hatchback with a rooftop tent up to three 4x4 adventure campers. Cruisin has been owned by Dennis and Tina Lucas since 1999 and sells eight automatic diesels from two to six berths under a published age ceiling: nothing over four years old, and the two Deluxe models under two. The hire includes different things at each end, too. Cruisin includes made-up beds, linen, towels, unlimited kilometres and up to three drivers. Campervan Village includes a mattress.

What the vehicle carries is the axis this pair turns on. Seven of Cruisin’s eight models — everything but the 2 Berth Hi Top — have an onboard shower and cassette toilet with hot and cold water, a fridge-freezer running from 80 litres on the two-berths to 190 on the larger vans, a gas cooktop and a full kitchen kit, and the beds are made up per berth with pillows, sheets, doonas and bath towels before you arrive. No Campervan Village model sold in Australia has a toilet or a shower, and none includes bedding: a mattress is provided, the sleeping bags, pillows, sheets and towels are yours to bring or buy, and a paid bedding add-on is offered on four of the eight lines only. Cooling runs from a 45-litre compressor fridge on the Grip down to a 20-litre esky that needs ice, and to nothing whatever on the Budget Mini-Camper, which is a hatchback with a rooftop tent rather than a campervan. Heating is the one place the two nearly meet: Cruisin fits a living-area heater to every model, but it runs on 240 volts, so it warms the van on a powered site and nowhere else, while no Campervan Village model has a heater or a mains hookup at all, so plugging in changes nothing.

The rest is what a trip risks rather than what it includes. Campervan Village is one of the few operators in this market with vehicles cleared for unsealed roads — the Grip, Desert Sands 4x4 and D5 Adventure Camper — where Cruisin has no 4WD and no paid way around a sealed-roads rule that allows only a well-maintained access road under twelve kilometres to a recognised campground. Cruisin sets the calendar in return: five days minimum, seven from Perth, ten between 26 December and 6 January, every mainland branch shut on Sundays, and no after-hours pickup anywhere. Then the money at pickup. Cruisin debits, rather than holds, a A$5,000 bond to a physical credit card, with a 2.15 to 2.18 per cent surcharge and up to fourteen working days for the refund, unless you buy the A$45-a-day Liability Reduction Option or the A$55-a-day Maximum Cover Package, the only tier that takes in windscreen, tyres, rollover, overhead and underbody damage. Campervan Village’s advertised A$0-a-day tier is not sold direct at all: on its own site a 2WD starts at a A$500 bond against a A$3,000 excess, and even the top tier keeps a A$500 minimum bond at Perth and Darwin — and Darwin is one of the two cities where it is the only one of this pair you can book at all.