Features

In issue five of Camping Trade World we focussed in on the camping and caravanning market in Sweden in our regular Doing Business With series. As part of that article we spoke to Lars-Erik Hörmander, the chairman of the Swedish Leisure Vehicle Industry Association or Husvagnsbranschen Riksförbund (HRV). Here is an extract from the conversation. To read the full Doing Business With Sweden article, check out issue five today.

CTW: How is the camping and leisure vehicle market in the Sweden right now? What is its current health?

LEH: “The camping and leisure vehicle market in Sweden shows good growth. Up to September, the number of registered caravans increased by 11 per cent and motorhomes by 30 per cent. Campsites increased their number of guest nights between June and August with 20 per cent in total during that period corresponding to 10.9 million guest nights.

“The leisure vehicle industry shows good economic growth and the retailers have almost sold out and concentrate on sales of new models and used caravans and motorhomes. Like the rest of Europe, the manufactures have had problems with delivery of essential parts to their production which can cause a negative impact on deliveries of new models. This can be a problem, but the industry has good hope that there soon will be a solution to this problem. Consumers have found leisure mobile living in their own country very interesting due to the pandemic and its restrictions. It seems like the domestic interest will continue but hopefully the international visitors will also come back when the pandemic restrictions have ended.

CTW: What are the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the Swedish camping and leisure vehicle market right now? That we can get back to a more normal way of living and start to travel more overseas, so that the growth of the leisure vehicle market remains, alongside the support of marketing activities.

LEH: “Currently we face an issue of a proposal from public authorities to make changes to the Swedish Bonus Malus system that will raise taxes even more to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. We make a lot of efforts as an organisation to convince politicians that leisure vehicle manufacturers in Europe can’t provide the Swedish market with electrified leisure vehicles at the rate required, which means that buyers won’t have any alternatives today.

“Our challenge is to get the politicians to listen to our predictions of a market decline if they fulfil the proposal of raising the tax in the Bonus Malus system to a level that will have negative impact on the Swedish leisure vehicle industry. Our calculation shows that on average every newly registered motorhome will have an extra tax of SEK 100/10km. Sweden is the only country in Europe where the politicians and public authorities have a proposal of increased tax in the Bonus Malus system for newly registered motorhomes. The manufactures in Europe have no interest to have a special production for the Swedish market until they have developed motorhomes with fuel that reduces emission of carbon dioxide or are electrified when it is a demand from the leading European markets. A decline in the industry will have negative impact on the campsites especially in the low

CTW: How do you think 2022 will be for the industry?

LEH: “Provided politicians and public authorities listen to our suggestions regarding Bonus Malus and that the manufacturers can produce enough caravans and motorhomes to the Swedish market then we predict that the industry will grow for many years to come. If we can get the politicians to acknowledge our predictions that raising tax in the Bonus Malus system to a level that will have a serious impact on the leisure vehicle industry, then we should remain on course for continued growth.

“The growth in the mobile living market has a positive impact for the Swedish hospitality industry and gives tax revenues back to the government.

“We are looking forward towards 2022 with big expectations and hopefully the exhibition market be back in normal so we can expose camping and caravanning products to media, retailers and consumers with the same good sales result as previous years.”