Spaceships vs Campervan Village

Both sit at the budget end of this market with compact automatic vans, most of them petrol two-sleepers. Campervan Village heats none of its three, and four of Spaceships' five are unheated too; the exception is the VW Cosmo, a diesel van that sleeps three, heats off its fuel tank and can also be booked as a manual. For most bookings a winter or shoulder-season trip is the wrong end of the market on either fleet, and a group of four or more lies elsewhere entirely. Campervan Village is a subsidiary of Wicked Campers, the Australian operator; Spaceships is New Zealand owned and operated. Where they separate structurally is depot coverage: Campervan Village holds Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown — one of only four operators in this market with all three airport gateways — and Spaceships holds Auckland and Christchurch, so a Queenstown finish is not available. In both cases a one-way between islands means booking and paying for the Cook Strait ferry yourself.

The pair turns on a trade-off: a fleet listed as self-contained throughout against a van that arrives ready to use. Campervan Village lists all three of its models as 'Certified self contained to NZA 5465', the number of the old blue-warrant standard, and does not say what kind of toilet they carry, so the listing is a question to settle with the warrant card at pickup rather than a guarantee. Spaceships lists three of its five, the Beta 2S, Sigma and Cosmo, as green-warrant certified with a fixed toilet; the Beta and the Dream Sleeper Mini are not certified and commit you to a holiday park or a DOC site every night. But what a Campervan Village van delivers beyond the toilet is almost nothing: no bedding on any model, no heater, no 240-volt hookup, and only the Aventus Plus carries a fridge — the other two cool with a 20-litre esky and ice bought along the way. Spaceships includes sleeping gear and a fridge on every model, and a gas cooker with pots, plates, cutlery and two free gas canisters on the equipped models. Unlimited kilometres come included with Spaceships; at Campervan Village they are a NZ$25-a-day add-on on every tier. The advertised daily rates are not a like-for-like comparison until sleeping bags, towels, ice and the kilometre surcharge are added back to the Campervan Village side.

The review records carry the widest gap in this pairing and among the widest in the market. Spaceships holds 4.5 on Google from 485 reviews across its two depots and 4.5 on Trustpilot from 434 — the only operator here where both platforms land on the same number. Campervan Village's weighted Google average is 1.7 from 19 reviews, no depot independently above 1.8, and its Trustpilot sits at 2.9 from 135 reviews pooling Australian and New Zealand depots under one listing. The Google sample is small enough that a handful of reviews could move it, but 19 across three depots with none above 1.8 is a signal rather than an outlier — the complaints visible at the Auckland depot describe vehicle condition at handover and communication problems during the hire. Handover hours separate them a second time. Spaceships runs a 24-hour automated pickup at both depots, with Christchurch fully self-service; Campervan Village opens Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm, Saturday 9am to noon, and is closed on Sundays — the only operator in this market with no Sunday service at any depot. A Sunday-afternoon arrival is a Spaceships booking by default, whatever else you weigh.