There are more and more mobile homes in Germany. At the beginning of the year there were almost 908,000, according to data from the Federal Motor Transport Authority. That’s 10.8 vehicles per 1000 inhabitants. Within a year, their number has increased by around 70,000 or a good eight percent. If you look back to 2017, the inventory has even doubled.
The boom in mobile homes is not accompanied by a move away from caravans. Rather, on the contrary: in the years since 2017, according to KBA data, the number of new registrations has consistently been above the values of the previous five years, even if there has been a certain decline in new registrations since the peak in the Corona year 2020. Current inventory figures for caravans cannot be found at the KBA.
The Caravanning Industry Association has been observing an upward trend for ten to 15 years. On the one hand, behind this lies an image change away from the bourgeois. On the other hand, developments such as the desire for more individual travel and closer contact with nature also gave the industry a boost, which was then reinforced again during the pandemic. The industry is currently facing challenges, but customer interest remains unbroken.
Motorhomes are by no means evenly distributed across Germany. Most of them in relation to the population are in the far north and south. Above all, the registration districts of Schleswig-Flensburg with 26.5 mobile homes per 1000 inhabitants and North Frisia with 25.5 directly on the Danish border and Garmisch-Partenkirchen with 25.5 on the edge of the Alps. The next-placed ones, Plön (24.9), Weilheim-Schongau (24.6) and Rendsburg-Eckernförde (23.4), are also found in Schleswig-Holstein and southern Bavaria, respectively. The national average is 10.8 mobile homes per 1,000 residents. At the other end there are – hardly surprisingly – mainly cities. Offenbach and Frankfurt am Main have the lowest mobile home densities with 3.5 and 3.6 mobile homes per 1000 inhabitants. Halle, Frankfurt Oder, Ludwigshafen, Gelsenkirchen and Magdeburg also have values below five.
Schleswig-Holstein is at the forefront
Overall, Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria dominate the ranking for the highest mobile home density with ten and twelve registration districts in the top 30 respectively. However, only Schleswig-Holstein stands out in terms of the value for the entire state with 19.2 mobile homes per 1000 inhabitants compared to the national average. At 12.7, Bavaria even falls just behind Lower Saxony, which has 12.8. Number four is Baden-Württemberg with 12.1. At the federal state level, Berlin is at the bottom with 5.1. This is obviously not just due to its status as a city-state, as Hamburg at least makes it into the lower midfield with ten. Other states with significantly below average values are Saxony-Anhalt with 6.1, Saxony with 7.1 and Thuringia with 7.5.
According to the ADAC subsidiary Pincamp, the most campsites – as of November 2022 – were in Bavaria with around 480, followed by Lower Saxony with a good 400 and Baden-Württemberg with 375. Schleswig-Holstein is well behind with a good 270. However, per capita it looks completely different and a motorhome as a travel vehicle is not limited to its own federal state anyway.