How the survey works
Before we reveal the winners of this year’s awards, we explain the background to the survey and how your responses produce our overall league tables
Q Why did you start this awards scheme? We wanted to provide help to potential caravan purchasers by giving them the benefit of the experiences of current owners. This is achieved by highlighting and rewarding manufacturers and dealers who consistently deliver high levels of customer satisfaction. This also hopefully raises standards and makes buying a van less of a lottery. Q Why did you decide to feature pre-owned caravans in the survey?
The pre-owned caravan market is large, and many readers and C&CC members purchase them – pre-owned models accounted for more than half of your survey responses this year.
We know many caravanners will not buy new, preferring to wait for the first owner to iron out any problems.
For some, committing £2500 to a caravan purchase is a bigger proportion of their disposable income than it is for others spending many times that.
It might also be the case that a first-time buyer wishes to test the water, but sensibly doesn’t want to spend a large sum on something that might not suit.
The pre-owned market is a good indicator of how marques stand the test of time, too, and this offers helpful insight for anyone intending to buy new. Q How representative is the survey? Responses to the survey come from readers of the printed or digital editions of Practical Caravan and from visitors to its website, as well as Camping and Caravanning Club members and those who fill in surveys at NEC industry shows that take place while the survey is open.
In the previous survey, 50.2% of respondents purchased a new caravan, while some 49.8% had bought pre-owned. This year, 52.2% of vans are pre-owned, while 47.8% are new.
The market continues to be dominated by Uk-built models. Of the big-name Continental manufacturers, Adria is the best-represented in the survey. Overall, vans built outside the UK account for a modest 5.3% of new caravans and 6.4% of used tourers. That’s a slight decline among new caravans and a modest increase among pre-owned tourers.
One reason for purchasing a Continental marque is that owners might plan to spend most of their time touring in Europe, or they already live there and want a caravan with the door on the UK offside.
Folding campers and pop-up-roof models continue to be represented in the survey, along with micro-caravans. However, the number of respondents is too small for firm conclusions to be drawn. Q How do the Owner Satisfaction Awards fit in with your Practical Caravan 2024 Awards?
The two have different aims. The Owner Satisfaction Awards provide the owner’s perspective on how a caravan has lived up to expectations over a period of time. They also give credit to dealers who have delivered good customer service.
Our Practical Caravan 2024 Awards (www.practicalcaravan. com/awards), meanwhile, were judged by a panel of experts who were looking to recognise product design and innovation. Q How do you decide who’ll win Gold and who’ll win a Silver Award? Gold is awarded to companies scoring 80% to 100%, Silver to those scoring 70% to 79.9%. Q How are the survey responses scored? The first few questions are for background information.
This year the graded sections ask respondents to tick either ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘acceptable’, ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. These score 15/10/5/1/0 respectively, or a variation of this for areas that carry greater weight.
Under ‘Faults reported’, one to three faults scores -10 for dealer and manufacturer, four to six faults is -20, and seven or more faults scores -30.
The final questions represent an overall judgment and are weighted accordingly. They are: ‘Would you buy another caravan of this make?’ and ‘Would you return to this dealership to buy another caravan?’
In each case, ‘Yes’ scores 50, ‘Perhaps’ 25, and ‘No’ zero. These scores are tallied up and expressed as a percentage.
We believe that keen owners might overmark, but we don’t downgrade responses. That’s one reason we set a minimum number of responses for any manufacturer or dealer, so the results are statistically robust. Q Which complaints are most frequent? For numerous years now, one perennial problem seems to be sourcing spare parts, especially for warranty claims. It’s unclear whether this difficulty is due to manufacturers or dealerships, although we get to hear both sides of the story.
Many compare the caravan industry to the automotive sector, noting the industry standard for obtaining parts is six weeks. This time period is not ideal, and delays of this length are very hard to justify.
Also, as in previous years, pre-delivery inspections (PDIS) remain a widespread bone of contention among respondents to our survey. One could argue that if a tourer passed all of its assembly-line inspections when it first left the factory, the PDI shouldn’t be a time-consuming or complicated job. But we still hear about dealerships having to carry out rectifications that ought to have been addressed before delivery.
‘To help purchasers, we highlight and reward manufacturers and dealers who consistently deliver high levels of customer satisfaction’
A poorly prepared caravan is one example of what happens when the manufacturer and the dealership fail to conduct those thorough checks. In fairness, though, many dealerships now make a good job of PDIS.
We hear of purchasers who prefer not to choose a new caravan, and instead wait for a nearly new model, whose first owner will have had any defects remedied.
Good dealerships will make a point of looking after their customers at all times and keeping them informed of progress when problems arise. Although many of them do this, a significant proportion do not.