We have been looking at buying a camper van to use for a day van on the beach and trips away.

I have seen plenty of adverts from companies offering to rent your van in an Air BnB Style service. This all seems a pretty good way to offset the cost of the van. I have spoken to one of the rental companies and understand the model of the service they are offering and that it can work if we are flexible regarding our use to.

Has anyone any real world experience or renting out a camper using a service such as Campertoo https://www.camptoo.co.uk/ or renting a van for a trip using one.

It would be great to hear any thoughts.

I had a friend who did it.

Trashed the van in double quick time. Everything from hitting other vehicles / walls, through to cutlery and kitchen utensils just disappeared, and stains or damage to the interior.

They did it for 6 months and gave up – final straw was another accident that meant thier holiday week the van was off the road with a back panel cracked and flapping in the breeze, waiting on parts and repair.

My nextdoor neighbor has 3 vans she rents as a business. The way people treat them is unbelievable. Mostly incompetence rather than malice but still hard to understand. She takes it on the chin as just part of the business but no way would I want to do that with my personal van.

but no way would I want to do that with my personal van.

This ☝️

I have wondered about buying a second van and renting it out, but probably but worth the effort / hassle. I wouldn’t let anyone near my own van though.

Thanks, that kind of covers the worst fears. You would hope people take better care of things with £1,000 deposits involved.

We did for a good few years. We had a VW T6. Van only once came back minging. Honestly most people really looked after it, even getting it valeted before returning it.
We had two issues with regards to accidental damage, but the customers were absolutely fine. We only ever billed them for costs and always provided them with invoices….and being honest it was tiny damage. One drove off while still connected to the electric and the other was just a small crack to the wing mirror. Generally put 20,000 miles a year on the van. We did use Camptoo but tried to get people on to our own website.
Insurance was expensive think it was about £2.3k a year.
Ours would be rented out from end of March until end of October. Pretty much every day. We tended to only book it in either 4 day or 7 day slots to minimise the turn around.
Each handover took around took approx 45 minutes. In terms of Starting up the business this took considerable time. Website, legal side of things (we had our terms and conditions drafted by a legal bod), back end booking process for the website including making sure all camptoo type sites had the same price for each season (there’s multiple sites similar to Camptoo and they all work slightly different).We purchased all of the additional equipment that renters would need, for example, tables, chairs, lamps, drive away tent, external heater, cups, plates etc.
I reckon I spent approx £10k on additional costs and business start up. We then had a friend who purchased a van rent his out through us.

In terms of finances. Ours was a new business, it didn’t lose money and once it was up and running the overhead was minimal.
Happy to give you additional figures if you’re interested. We only folded the business due to divorce. The intention was for it to be something for the kids to run. They would help clean the van and earn extra pocket money.

Thanks for the details advice, its really interesting to hear your firsthand experience. Definitely lots to think about.