'A Huge Opportunity To Connect With The Kids': RV Rentals Increase As Families Continue To Work, School From Home
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Over the summer, RV rentals took off.
As one of the only ways to vacation safely while maintaining social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, people were packing up and hitting the open road.
And now, a new fall trend is emerging with parents deciding to take a rare opportunity to see the world firsthand while working and schooling remotely.
"The pandemic affected us completely," Amber Mamian, an Orange County mother of five, said.
Mamian, a travel writer, said her family decided to rent an RV through Road Bear RV Rentals and Sales and test it out for the first time.
"With five people in a house, and a lot of monotony and the same kind of routine going on, we really wanted to get out and go and explore, but so do safely," she said.
And despite being on the road, Mamian says they have not missed a beat with school work or deadlines, connecting to WiFi at RV parks.
"We were able to work and everybody on computers," she said. "And so the kids were able to do their schooling in the morning, and then the rest of the day you could go out and explore wherever you're at."
And it's not just Mamian and her family who are getting out this season.
"We're getting lots of interest from people who have been working from home or schooling from home for seven months and they're ready for something different," Gordon Hewston, a chief operating officer overseeing multiple RV companies, said.
According to Hewston, a number of families have been turning to RVs to take advantage of their newfound flexibility.
"We're easily doing twice as much business as we were last year," he said. "It makes a lot of sense, you know. You don't have to live where you've lived all these years, you can live in a few different places, try out a few different places, go to these places you always wanted to go."
As for Mamian, she said she was already planning her family's next trip — one that will last much longer.
"We want to go all through Zion, and we're excited," she said. "This for us is a huge opportunity to connect with the kids and have this time that otherwise we wouldn't have had with them and to really try to take advantage of the time we have with them."
Hewston said most of the growth in the RV industry has come from first-time renters, showing just how much the pandemic has changed the way Americans think about travel.
