Dan Alpe wants to ‘do a Jucy’ with upmarket motorhomes

Jucy founder Dan Alpe is about to launch new Star vehicles as the company hopes to shake up the premium RV market.

He wants to repeat the Jucy formula – a distinctive look with a unique fitout – for the fleet of Star vehicles in Australia and New Zealand.

Jucy Group last year bought Star RV from Australia’s Apollo for $50 million, when to meet regulatory requirements it divested the brand as part of its merger with Tourism Holdings.

Star will unveil the new-look vehicles to the Trenz tourism event in Christchurch this week.

‘’It’s quite different to what anyone else does. Our intention was to create something that had its own personality,’’ said Alpe.

Besides the distinctive livery, there will be new styling inside using natural tones and after international market research Star was investigating installing features such as safes and heated towel rails.

Jucy and Star have around 2500 vehicles in New Zealand and Australia.

Jucy targets 18 to 35-year-olds value-driven customers, while Star is aimed at older tourists.

‘’What we want to do is build and develop a brand that in time can sit at the same level of strength as Jucy does so we can have two really strong brands that complement each other.’’

Forty more Star vans were being built in the coming year and would be fitted with new interiors and other ex-Apollo four and six-berth vans would be re-fitted.

‘’The real focus for us as to as to have a proposition that is different from everyone else,’’ said Alpe.

‘’Thl do a great job of presenting a modern vehicle but we really want to put a personality into the product that we offer. We’ve done it with Jucy and we want to create that for Star - but differently.’’

Dan Alpe with a Star RV vehicle. Photo / Supplied

Thl has more than 5500 vehicles worldwide.

Jucy’s resurgence from its pandemic collapse has been funded by majority owner Australian private equity firm Next Capital. Other shareholders include Ngāi Tahu Holdings’ Greenmount capital and David Cushing.

‘’We’re well supported by backers and we’ve come off the back of a really strong summer for tourism in New Zealand.’’ he said.

As part of the Apollo deal, Jucy picked up forward bookings.

‘’What was really pleasing was that the Europeans especially got very excited to come back down here, New Zealand has got a really good reputation internationally right now from a tourism perspective.’’

Bookings for the rest of the year were strong.

But there would be a lid on numbers of tourist numbers until airline capacity returned to pre-Covid levels. Airlines were coming back steadily and he said that would help bring down the price of air fares.

Alpe said prices for motor home rentals were also up, but he said they would likely start to fall as more capacity hit the road.

Jucy is enjoyed a surge of international visitors this summer. Photo / Supplied

‘’Without a doubt the yields were high this year, as supply was short in the market. Like most other operators we flex our rates. We do see that coming back as more supply gets into the market.’’

He said high prices were not stopping people from travelling and they were staying longer.

During the past year one of the biggest problems had been breakdowns in Cook Strait.

One group of 20 Jucy Group vehicles, nine days into a 20-day hire dropped off vehicles in Christchurch because they couldn’t get a ferry.

‘’It’s been a logistical challenge for us, but it’s also it’s been a pretty poor user experience. You’ve got people coming down to New Zealand and they can’t get a ferry crossing.’’

The lack of working holidaymakers to fill tourism jobs had also been a challenge.

‘’It is getting better but we’re not where we need to be,’’ said Alpe.

Australia had got the jump on New Zealand, subsidising flights and visa costs.

‘’They took a very proactive approach - we were late to the party.’’