Staycations or stay-at-home holidays in the UK are set for a boost with, for the first time, personal contract purchase (PCP) becoming widely available in the motorhome and touring caravan market.

According to vehicle data provider Glass’s, the finance product, which has revolutionised the new car market in recent years, will make leisure vehicles much more affordable and potentially bring a wave of new buyers.

Rupert Pontin, director of valuations, said: “Touring caravans and motorhomes are not cheap vehicles and you can easily spend £40,000 on the latter. However, the use of finance products in the market has tended to be quite limited, meaning that the typical buyer is an older person with savings.

“That has changed in recent months, with the arrival of a handful of finance companies entering the market. Now, the situation could change quite quickly. The touring caravan and motorhome market has been quite buoyant in recent years but we believe that this development could provide a further boost.

“The key advantages of PCPs are that they make vehicles much more affordable and accessible. Crucially, they will allow younger buyers with families who would like a caravan or motorhome for stay-at-home holidays to seriously consider taking out a PCP, typically over five to seven years.”

Mr Pontin said that the availability of PCPs could make leisure vehicles of this kind as accessible to the average family as buying a second car.

“Some of the headline figures that are being seen in the market are very attractive and, as competition grows across the sector for PCPs, we would expect them to become even more viable as a monthly expenditure for more and more people.

“Certainly, if you were planning to use a motorhome for two or three family holidays a year, then the maths stacks up pretty well against other holiday choices.”

Rupert added that the longstanding barrier to the introduction of PCPs into the touring caravan and motorhome sector had been finance company confidence in future values.

“From a finance company point of view, the viability of PCPs is absolutely dependent on being able to confidently rely on future values of touring caravans and motorhomes.

“We have produced leisure vehicle pricing guides for many years, but the depreciation profile of these products is very complicated and finance companies have been reticent to take the risk.

“However, they have come to recognise that the quality of the products has improved in recent years and that accurate used valuation data is more than suitable for use in constructing PCP packages.”