NEC Camping Caravan and motorhome show - is it worth your time? (Plus 5 tips for visiting)

Hey guys! Today I'm answering a question that I've been getting an awful lot this month. Is the NEC camping car van and motorhome show right for you, even if you don't have a van yet? Hey I'm Kat from the motorhome travel website Wandering Bird where we share tips and advice for anyone wanting to travel the UK and Europe by motorhome or camper. Today I'm answering a question from David, one of our subscribers. Thank you for sending in your question David. He asks my wife and I are considering buying a camper van one day or maybe a small motorhome but we're not ready to commit just yet. Do you think the NEC camping caravan and motorhome show is right for us to visit this year or should we wait until we're ready to buy? We live quite a way away so it's a big commitment for us to visit. David that is a great question and I'm excited to share my thoughts with you. If you've ever wondered about whether going to a motorhome show, especially a big one like the NEC in Birmingham, give David a like and a thumbs up and if you want to know more about traveling the UK and Europe by motorhome or camper van, hit subscribe and click the little bell to be notified when our next video comes out. Before we get started I will be at the NEC show this week. I'll be there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I'm going to be giving my talk about taking a motorhome to Europe on Friday at 3.45 in the Freedom to Go Theatre. I'll be doing a meet-up and handing out some stickers afterwards, so if you are around come and say hi, it'd be lovely to meet you. There will also be another meet-up earlier in the day, I think it's gonna be around lunchtime. If you're not already follow me on Twitter and on Facebook and I'll put notifications on there about where the meet-up is going to happen. If you can hear random sort of scratching and banging Max under the bed chasing his bone around, so I apologise if they're allowed knocking noises going on. Anyway, yes if you can come and see my talk I would love and appreciate any support if you happen to be there and if not just come and meet me during the day. Yeah, hi, Dog with Bone. You just want to be on YouTube videos don't you? You've ignored me all morning and now you're like, hi? Right, let's get on to David's question. So for anyone who has never heard of the NEC Camping Caravan and Motorhome Show, it's a huge show, funnily enough, about camping caravans and motorhomes. It's held inside the NEC Arena in Birmingham, which again is a huge building and there are five halls of that building that are taken over by the show, which runs for a week. This year in 2020 it's going from the 18th to the 23rd of February. There are a huge number of motorhomes, campervans, caravans, camping equipment, the latest tents, park homes, static homes, holidays, vans to hire, accessories, gear, dog stuff, and random wobbly boards that seem to be there every year. So they obviously do well. Health stuff, anything you can think of to do with road trips, life on the road, camping, outdoor adventures and generally enjoying your free time, that will probably be somewhere at the NEC. There are two versions of the NEC show held each year. The one in February, which is the Camping Caravan and Motorhome Show, and then the one in October is more caravan and motorhome centric, and that's also where a lot of the new models are unveiled in the October show. So one thing I love about the NEC show is the sheer number of activities and stuff that's going on around it. So this year, as in a lot of years, you've got dog shows, you've got, I think that's Crazy Golf this year, which I'm ridiculously excited about and also quite competitive. Yeah, Mr. WB refuses to play with me anymore. So if anyone wants to come play Crazy Golf with me, let me know. I will be there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I'm not gonna be there all day, every day, because I've got Mac, as you can see. I am gonna be there all day Thursday and Friday. So yes, if you want to come play Crazy Golf, that'd be awesome. I don't know how it works, but hey. You can also do things like drive a motorhome for the first time, you can drive a caravan, you can learn tips and tricks from all sorts of things, staying safe on the road. The Freedom to Go Theatre, which is where I'm going to begin my talk about going to Europe, they have a huge number of people who are very knowledgeable in what they do all throughout the week. Obviously there are different people on different days. I think every day there's a thing about motorhomes and campervans, and I think every day there's a bit about caravanning. And then you have different experts or people who've had adventures that are sharing their thoughts and inspirations. So if you ever want a place to sit down and have a chill, thank you puppy, that's a really good place to head to. Have a look when you first get there, whatever day you get there, have a look at the timetable and see who's speaking, because you might find something there that really piques your interest. Right, David, you're obviously interested in road trips and you're obviously interested in motorhomes and campervans. One thing that we did really wrong when we bought our very first motorhome was we did not do enough research. We know that, I've been very open about that. We bought pretty much the first van we found that was in our budget, which admittedly wasn't a high budget, but we chose a van which with hindsight was really wrong for us. So I highly recommend anybody who is new to the world and who is thinking about getting motorhome, campervan or caravan, not that I know a great deal about caravanning, but anyone who's looking at getting something like that, do as much research as they possibly can before you buy. The more you do, the more prepared you're going to be, the more options you'll have seen, the more you can start whittling down what works for you. For that reason alone the NEC show is amazing because it's just the sheer number of vans, but it also can be really overwhelming if you don't know exactly what you want. Walking into that hall, I mean you have an entire hall just for motorhomes and an entire one just for sort of caravans and then the campervans are sort of mingled up with the motorhomes. Walking into that and just expecting to go round them all, you're not going to do it. It's not going to happen in one day. So you do not need to go to the NEC show just to start having a look at some ideas and seeing if motorhomes or campervans are best for you. Do it, by all means, it's fun to have a look round, but that's not going to give you the answer there and then. Going to a bigger venue isn't necessarily the right move if you have no idea what you want and you haven't got a little bit further down that road. It will show you lots of options and it will show you cool things that it might sort of spark ideas and the sort of things you want to be saving for or looking to go for in the future definitely, but as a general kind of you must go to the NEC to look at new vans, no you don't need to. You can go down the road to your local motorhome dealer or salesman or whoever and start looking around at lots that have got 20, 30, 50 vans on rather than several hundred. You'll get just as much of an idea of what you like and what you don't like by starting on a slightly smaller scale. You do not need to traipse all the way to the NEC just to look at vans. When you are ready to buy you will find some really good deals at the NEC shows on new vans and sort of new stock. Top tip for anybody who doesn't want to buy a brand new van or get the good sort of new van deals, the dealers often get rid of their stock obviously towards the end of the year or very early in January, so I recommend if you are not fussed about having the latest model of something start shopping around sort of November December time and they're often trying to offload their old stuff so they can make way for the new stuff which comes out, funnily enough, around the February show. So that's a really good way of saving yourself an extra few thousand pounds maybe by shopping then for slightly older or outdated models. So question for you, did you visit a motorhome show before you bought your motorhome or campervan? We've already said that we didn't but I'd love to hear about your experience that maybe David would find that helpful as well. So drop a comment below and let him know whether you went to a show, did you go to the NEC, did you find it helpful before you bought anything? Let me know what you think. Another thing we enjoy about the NEC show is seeing all the new gadgets and accessories that are on offer and around the outskirts of the halls it's just crammed full of things that you didn't even know existed. That's where we found out about the gas low refillable bottles and we found out about stabilizing legs which we had in our last motorhome because it was over three and a half tons and it really helped. We've also found random things for security and for, I'm trying to think, oh our air cool, our trans cool unit that we use for air conditioning across Europe. Yes I am still going to do a review on that at some point. We didn't really go anywhere that hot last year so we haven't used it enough and I don't like doing a review until I've kind of used it to breaking point so I know how good it is. But that's where we found out about it. We were actually walking past it at the NEC show and like that looks cool so we bought one of those. There's some amazing things that you don't know about until you see them so we really enjoy looking around them and kind of finding out what's come out new in the world. Some things you'll find over and over and over and over again and then other stuff is like brand new and you've never seen before and it's quite exciting. So a few tips for anybody who has never been to the NEC show before. Number one you will not see everything unless you are going for the entire week and even then I don't think you'd see everything. It's hard to explain the scale of the place. Now if you've been following my channel for a while and thank you I appreciate it and you'll have seen some of my previous NEC videos and just how huge they are but if you've never been when you first walk in you're like I don't even know where to start. So decide what you most want to go there for. Do you want to go and find your dream motorhome? Then don't start in the caravan section. Do you want to just have a look round and enjoy the atmosphere? Cool, wander around. Do you want to go look at accessories? Start walking around the outside and you'll generally find that the motorhome accessories are in the motorhome halls which are generally she said I think it's two and three and then four tends to be the static vans and five tends to be the camping and one tends to be the caravans. I'm pointing as I'm doing this and you watch I'm gonna walk in there tomorrow on the first day and everything will be different and this entire video will be wrong but hey never mind. So yeah you tend to find that the accessories go like the caravan accessories will all be around the caravans and things so that's what you want to go and do start wandering around them. When you walk in you will get a brochure and that will tell you roughly a sort of layout of things and you can start narrowing down what's most important to you. Number two wear comfortable shoes. This is not a place for your very fancy high heels gentlemen be warned. Yeah no wear comfy shoes it's not a place that people dress up for at all obviously the staff and the guys on the stands are fairly smartly dressed but for the rest of us plebs just wandering around I'm probably gonna be in a jumper at some point this week yeah I'll be wearing boots and trainers pretty much all week it's not a very very very smart place. Take your time as you go around and take lots of little breaks there are plenty of seating outside in the food courts there's lots of seating there's the freedom to go theatre you can literally just wander in and sit down there even if nobody's on you can sit it's a great place to have your picnic if you bring in a picnic with you yeah take your time take lots of little breaks and sort of pace yourself because by the end of the day you'll be flagging. Talking of picnics bring a rucksack with you with or without the picnic it's irrelevant but you will pick up so much paperwork and bumf if you go and find a motorhome you like you can get little sort of paper sheet all about it so you can remember what it is and try not to take stuff that you know you're not interested in a let's try and save the planet little bit while we can and save some paper but also you're gonna get confused and you're gonna come back with a stack of papers and you're gonna be able to remember what you really liked what you didn't so even though everyone is going to be nicely handing you out stuff you do not have to take them just say no thank you yeah so we find that just try narrow down the paper that we come back with but a rucksack will really help to carry all that paperwork if you can bring it you can buy food that there's loads of food options in the food court outside as with most shows the food is a little bit pricier than you might otherwise enjoy paying for I kind of tend to take a bottle of water and some snacks in with me and actually normally we've got the motorhome so we tend to go back to the motorhome and have some lunch there which is great and it gives us a little bit of break and I sit down and we can kick our shoes off but if you haven't got a motorhome with you there are lots of places to get food you're not gonna starve I promise tip for I think yeah I'm pretty sure that was tip for tip for we'll roll with it ask questions the guys and girls who are on the stand are really really knowledgeable they do this day in and day out ask questions even if you think they're stupid and silly and they probably heard them a million times before that's what they're there for yes of course they're trying to sell you stuff and yes of course they're gonna give their business a positive spin but they will answer a straight question I mean obviously if you ask him is your product better than them they're gonna say their product is better but they will answer a straight question if you don't understand how it works if you don't understand why you need it if you don't understand how to fit it any of these questions they can ask you they can show you that's one of the really nice things about being able to talk face-to-face with these people is that they are there to help you and show you and encourage you to buy their product basically you can ask questions and then walk off people do it all the time we're very British about this and I know I used to feel quite uncomfortable talking to someone for 20 minutes and getting all the information like okay thanks bye do you can do that it's fine if you don't want to buy it nobody's gonna chase you around the hall going I spoke to you now you need to buy the product ask questions tip 5 the earlier you can get there the better and no it's not always easy if you are in work or if you've got childcare although it's a fantastic place for kids there's loads of activities and things that they can get involved in and kids seem to just enjoy looking around the vans anyway it's like mini homes that they find fun to look in and imagine going off on adventures with so definitely don't let childcare put you off going but I get if work you can't always get there earlier but if you can get there at 10 which I believe is when the doors open you'll find up into lunchtime it's fairly quiet you can look around whatever vans you want to without issue you can talk to people without issue from lunchtime onwards at 10 to get really really busy and that makes it a lot harder especially like the brand new vans you're gonna have a queue to get in and out and it's gonna feel a bit more crowded and claustrophobic and things in the busier areas so yes earlier is always better so after all of that David to answer your question succinctly I think it's a great day out I think for anybody who is interested in motorhomes camper vans or time spent on the road it's a fantastic place to just start gathering knowledge and information however if it's difficult for you to get there and you don't want to buy a brand new motorhome right now it is not a necessity you do not need to go to the NSE at all ever before you buy a motorhome or a camper van whichever one that you are interested in you can never go it's fine so if it's a struggle for you this year don't worry about it I guarantee that there will be another one next year or whenever is more convenient for you I hope that helped answer your question David thanks again for sending it in and for anybody else who's not sure whether the NEC is right for them or not I hope that gave you a little bit more insight into whether or not you should make the effort to go next time I'm going to be sharing some of the fun things that we find at the NEC I'm also going to be sharing a replay of my talk which is a reminder is on Friday at 3 45 p.m. in the freedom to go theatre which I think is hall 2 off the top of my head I'm only obviously going to be showing that if I don't make an absolute tit of myself on stage in front of a lot of people if I do you're never gonna see a replay and it will never be mentioned again yeah yeah so normally I publish videos on Wednesdays and Sundays I guarantee you this week that's not gonna happen I am in the motorhome and the internet is horrendous this week storm Dennis is not helping thank you for all those who are following our adventure getting back from France to the UK in the middle of storm Dennis it was just fun again you can follow all of our adventures on Facebook Instagram and Twitter until then safe travels to you or I will see you in the next video bye we're talking about chasing every moment of a good night we go around the world for a show