Road trip! Scottsdale company makes it easier to rent RVs

“The only businesses we want to disrupt are those that have stood between RV hosts and guests,” Paul Kacir, founder and CEO of RVnGO, a Scottsdale-based business, that puts RV owners directly in touch with individuals who want to rent recreational vehicles through its peer-to-peer rental site.

According to Kacir, RVs are a huge pool of underutilized assets because there is an existing rental fleet of between 150 to 200 thousand RV units and a demand for 35 million transactions a year.

“We give people who own an RV and maybe are not using it all the time, a way to make money from that RV,” Kacir said. “It’s very similar to listing your apartment or second home for rent on Airbnb. All they have to do is log on, create an account and just provide the information for their RV.”

Roughly 10 million households own an RV and in 2015, the RV industry created an economic impact of $50 billion with more than 18,000 public and privately-owned campgrounds nationwide.

Just in the Southwest, there are hundreds of destinations that make the region a road tripper’s dream. In Arizona, there is the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Antelope Canyon, Petrified Forest National Park, Horseshoe Bend, Kartchner Caverns, the Four Corners, and more.

Kacir said he saw that this multibillion-dollar industry was “plagued by middlemen who…extracted an expensive fee [and] being forced to take bundled products that were inferior.”

RVnGO is free for owners to list their RVs and use the site while also getting 100 percent of the booking fees. The company gets its profits through the guest paying a three percent credit card processing charge and for value-added services.

One of the value-added services that makes RVnGO unique is its comprehensive insurance coverage with $1 million auto liability coverage and $200,000 RV property damage coverage because regular RV insurance does not cover rentals.

“It’s just a daily insurance policy and only the guest pays it when they’re renting… It makes it easier for individuals to just come in and rent their RV when they’re not using it,” Kacir said.

Summer 2019 will be RVnGO’s first fully operational summer, for more information on the company, click here.