Pan Am Games
Equine support staff who choose to live on site during the games at Caledon Pan Am Equestrian Park this summer will be accommodated in a fleet of 40 RVs provided by Motor Home Travel Canada.
By Henry Stancu, thestar.com Reporter
A Bolton RV dealership that began 14 years ago with one rental RV is providing 40 RVs for Toronto's Pan Am games out of a fleet of 100 privately owned motor homes.
What a difference 14 years has made.
Providing 40 motor homes for the Pan Am Games may once have seemed impossible but when opportunity knocked, Dave Sammut’s team was up for the task.
“It was an interesting process that started back in March last year,” says the president and general manager of Motor Home Travel Canada Inc. in Bolton.
“That was when the Pan Am organizers stopped by to see some motor homes and it was quite an exciting prospect for our little dealership. We had some formidable competitors out there, so it was great that they chose us over the others. We also happen to have a terrific staff that makes it all come together.”
It’s the biggest project the company has had since Sammut, who’s been in the RV business for 40 years, began working for himself out of a Pearson airport-area hotel in 2001 with one motor home. The business has grown to become one of Ontario’s largest motor home dealerships, with dozens of brand new and used RVs on the lot and a rental agency with a fleet of 100 privately owned motor homes.
The company has also sold and rented a full line of Coachman brand A and C class models. Customers include many GTA-area feature film and television shoots, the annual Boots and Hearts music festival in Bomanville, scores of families for RV vacations. Units even doubled as temporary housing in strategic locations during the G8 Huntsville summit of 2010.
Developing a stable of privately-owned RVs for the rental side of the company’s business wouldn’t have been possible without a growing new RV client base to draw on. That’s where the company’s airport hotel room beginnings proved so useful.
Sammut began there with a single RV, renting it out to tourists as they arrived at Pearson from all over the world. They’d get picked up at the airport, spend their first night in the hotel and be oriented with their rented motor home, before driving away on their Canadian RV vacation adventure the next morning. A concept grew from there.
“We developed a process where every single one of the motor homes we rent is privately owned,” Sammut explains. “We have families who dreamed of owning a motor home but had trouble justifying ownership, so we help them justify it by selling them one that’s put into our rental fleet when they aren’t using it. And because it’s going into a rental fleet it is deemed by Revenue Canada to be a business, so the owner gets all of the HST back as a tax credit.
“They get a great deal on a motor home. It’s tax free, they can use it whenever they are inclined, it’s stored for free at our Bolton location and we rent it out, sharing that revenue with the owners.”
Last year the rental side of the business generated about $600,000 net profit for owners, he says. Click here for the full story.
Details about buying, renting and servicing a motor home at Motor Home Ontario can be found at www.motorhometravel.com