Vintage Vacations – the UK’s original Airstream holidays and glamping pioneers on the Isle of Wight
The Guardian “The Doyens of retro holiday pads, Vintage Vacations”
What started out as a hobby turned into a life-changing business ….
We bought our first 1965 ‘Tradewind’ Airstream over from America early 2004. Having a holiday home on the Isle of Wight it made sense for us to keep it on the island. The original idea was to use it ourselves and maybe rent it out for the occasional holiday and photo shoot. However, once we had our hands on our ‘trailer’ we really caught the bug and had a ‘what if …’ vision for a whole field of retro caravans….
Our first local newsagent advertisement caught the eye of a travel editor from The Guardian newspaper, who came to stay and gave us a great review bringing in our first spate of bookings. Word spread during 2004 and we were thrilled to find that so many others loved the idea of a stay in a vintage caravan. We made the move to the Island full time in 2007 and 2020 will see our SEVENTEENTH season (!) with 13 American vintage caravans as well as our various British classic caravans.
We are very proud to have been among the very first businesses offering Glamping holidays in the UK … and the original Glamping holiday operators on the Isle of Wight!
The Independent “The Country’s coolest caravan park”
As Vintage Vacations became our full time jobs (Our previous 25 year careers were in the photographic industry), we added to our holiday locations with The Mission, The Scout Hall and The Shack. We also ‘curate’ The Bungalow.
The Sunday Times “Trailers without the trash”
We are always on the lookout for interesting places and never quite know what our next project will be (well, we do actually … Tiny Homes Holidays)
We put our hearts into all of our projects – all we can do is what we love ourselves and hope that you will too. We like to think our places are low on twee and high on real ‘vintage’ atmosphere … with a healthy dose of kitsch to stop it all getting too serious.
The Sunday Telegraph “Specialists in beautifully stylised retro accommodation”
We were delighted to receive a ‘Highly Commended’ award at the IOW Chamber of Commerce Business Awards for Excellence 2009 … and floored to actually WIN an award in 2010 (Tourism & Leisure catagory) 2012 saw us as runners up in Coast Magazines awards (best caravan and camping site) The Shack won “cosiest cottage hideaway” in the 2013 My Isle of Wight Awards In 2014 and 2015 we picked up 2 further My Isle of Wight Awards for Cosiest cottage hideaway (the Shack) and best place to go glamping (Vintage Vacations Airstreams)
Why not check our reviews on airbnb
The Sunday Telegraph Magazine “a time capsule holiday on a time capsule island”
We hope we can help create some wonderful holiday memories for you.
Helen & Frazer Cunningham
Vintage Vacations
We are supporters of the Cut Tourism Vat campaign and pledge to pass some of the benefit of any reduction of VAT to our guests by way of price reductions and to use the rest to continue to grow our business thus bringing in more tax revenue.
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