Hershey RV Show 2009 (Only sorta a camping story)

[Mallo]

Harrisburg East campground don't believe the hype you can almost sorta not hear the highway while inside the Hitchhiker.  

But enough about the campground (which is nice despite the road noise) we're here to walk the Hershey RV show.  Now we just got our Hitchhiker in '08 so we're in no rush to replace it.  After the last couple of years though there have been a lot of changes in the industry so we thought we'd go to the show to see how things have shook out.

The very first thing one notices is the size of the show (This is our third trip to Hershey for this show) it is at most half of what it used to be.

And of course the builders that have gone under are gone completely.  

Where it gets interesting is when you start to look at the folks that are there.

KZ is here but no high end rigs, the owner of Family Camping (The local KZ dealer) was saying that they've "suspended" production on those.  KZ does have the best Cameo knock off in the Durango LX I had to step out to make sure I hadn't gotten confused and went back into the same trailer again.

Newmar is here but with a very small display compared to prior years and the only fifth wheels are the Cypress line.

Smaller lighter cheaper is the theme of the day for most of the dealers all but the dealers repping Heartland and Carriage both of them have some of the higher end fifth wheels on the lot.

A lot of companies are touting half ton towable on the banners over a lot of the fifth wheels.  Open Range is betting the farm on it, both Cat and I found them to be pretty ugly units.  Sure the full body paint on the outside is nice but on the inside it looks like ... something you'd build out of a kids construction set.  But I don't like the looks of the inside of the Seville and I understand Crossroads is selling them so what do I know.

On the first day there were very few people Wed evening, nothing we didn't expect so far.

What we hadn't expected and saw was the number of sold units.  I was starting to think the dealers had just slapped a few sold stickers around at random until we walked in on more then one person buying class A's in the final stages of negotiation.  We must of bumped into three or four buyers during the early evening we were there.

The folks repping Tiffen were saying they'd sold 14 units on the first day (The lady we were talking too had sold two herself she was a bit giddy).  

So far some good some bad nothing we've seen holds a candle to the Princess.

Mallo

[EdJ]

We went to the show on Wednesday and was very disappointed that the show size was so small.  We were there two years ago and it was at least 1/3 larger then.  Even the number of vendors in the arena was way down.  Of course, I was disappointed that NuWa was not represented, but I can understand it.  Hopefully , NuWa will be able to be represented at the Tampa Super Show in January.  Jayco had one of the larger display areas, but most of the trailers they had were the entry lines (cheap price and cheaply made).  Only a few Eagles and no Designers.  We got there around 10:00am and by 2:30pm we had seen just about everything we wanted to see and we left.  Two years ago, it took us two days to see everything we wanted to see.  Of course, we spent a lot of time in the HitchHikers on display then....   

[Mallo]

We went to the show on Wednesday and was very disappointed that the show size was so small.  We were there two years ago and it was at least 1/3 larger then.  Even the number of vendors in the arena was way down.  Of course, I was disappointed that NuWa was not represented, but I can understand it.  Hopefully , NuWa will be able to be represented at the Tampa Super Show in January.  Jayco had one of the larger display areas, but most of the trailers they had were the entry lines (cheap price and cheaply made).  Only a few Eagles and no Designers.  We got there around 10:00am and by 2:30pm we had seen just about everything we wanted to see and we left.  Two years ago, it took us two days to see everything we wanted to see.  Of course, we spent a lot of time in the HitchHikers on display then....   

We might of bumped into you then I think we were two or three days that year going around to Glacier Bay, Hitch Hiker, Sunnybrook trying to just get our heads around every variation.

I have co workers coming in on Saturday one of them is very interested but having trouble figuring out what he wants. (Class A vs TT vs 5th Wheel)

Mallo

[mmitc100]

NuWa will also not display at Tampa.  In both cases we left it to the dealers to decide if they wanted to display in the shows and share in the expense.  Both chose to not display.   MIKE

[EdJ]

Bummer....  NuWa would have been a great addition to the Tampa show.  Also a great way to get out the message of the new purchasing system now in effect.