Static buildup: Hull’s caravan makers enjoy a British holiday boom

theguardian.com:

W hen the David Attenborough nature series Wild Isles was documenting the UK and Ireland’s coastal beauty, Peter Munk noticed it not because of the rave reviews, but because traffic to his website surged. The business he runs makes caravans, and a pleasant Sunday-evening advertisement for the islands of Britain and Ireland provided a welcome boost.

But his company, Willerby, hardly needed the help, as a result of a British-holiday boom during the pandemic. Some in the caravan industry are now hoping the change has shifted British holidaymaking habits for good – even as others warn that the market is facing a glut.

The pandemic pushed numbers of static caravans to record levels, according to market researcher Mintel. Britons took 3.7m caravan holidays in 2019, but that rose to 4.3m in 2022. Mintel data suggests almost a quarter of the UK’s adult population has been on a caravan holiday.

Britain’s forest parks and crowded coastal tourist hotspots are not the only places that have benefited from the caravanning renaissance. Willerby’s home city of Hull has a good claim to being the UK’s caravan capital.

Willerby started out making beehives, but after the second world war, its founder switched to touring caravans to be towed behind cars and then the statics that now fill caravan parks. Its factory – taken over from a typewriter company – sits by Hull’s port, whose shipbuilding history and good access to timber imports probably helped it become a caravan hub.

Three miles to the north-west is Victory Leisure Homes. Across the road from there is Delta Caravans. Six miles farther north, in the east Yorkshire town of Beverley, is ABI. In all, about 90% of the UK’s holiday caravans are built in the city, according to industry data.

Tha