Travellers Autobarn vs Apollo

Both fleets are entirely automatic, and both contracts keep you on sealed roads. Travellers Autobarn permits access roads under 500 metres to a recognised campground, Apollo a well-maintained access road under 12 kilometres to a commercial campground or major attraction. The exclusion lists then overlap almost exactly — Skippers Road, Ninety Mile Beach, Ball Hut Road, the Coromandel north of Colville, the sealed Crown Range Road in both agreements, and ski-field access roads from 1 June to 31 October. Neither company gives you a gravel itinerary, so the road rules are not what separates these two.

What separates them is fittings and the calendar. Travellers Autobarn hires five petrol vehicles from Auckland and Christchurch, and no model carries a built-in heater of any kind — for pick-ups between May and September the company supplies a free winter pack whose electric heater works only at a powered campsite. Neither of its depots sits at an airport, neither opens on a Sunday or a public holiday, and both close at weekends from 1 June to 31 August. Apollo runs seven automatic diesels from Auckland, Christchurch and Queenstown, 08:00 to 16:30 seven days, with free same-day airport transfers and road-user charges collected separately. Apollo lists diesel living-area heating, a shower and hot water on its five Euro models, and driver’s-cab heat only on the Hitop and Endeavour. Inclusions divide the same way: bedding and kitchen equipment come with every Apollo model, while Travellers Autobarn’s living-equipment charge is mandatory on the campervan models and the Chubby and the Station Wagon have no built-in cooker — the Chubby cooks on a portable gas cooker. The Station Wagon carries no bedding either.

Certification is where the difference stops being a comfort question. Travellers Autobarn lists the Chubby, HiTop, Kuga and Hi5 as self-contained, but its terms effective 19 June 2026 tie the certificate on ‘certain campervans’ to a NZ$50 portable toilet issued at pick-up, and the green warrant requires a toilet fixed to the floor of the vehicle. thl’s booking system marks all seven Apollo categories certified, with 12-litre built-in hideaway toilets in the two compact vans; both are company claims, and the warrant that counts is the one displayed on the vehicle handed over. Liability then differs in structure as well as in size: Travellers Autobarn holds a NZ$3,500 bond on a credit card while the included Standard Protection leaves the hirer liable up to NZ$50,000 on a rollover or write-off, cut to NZ$10,000 by Protection Plus at NZ$35 a day and to nil by the Value Pack at NZ$45 a day. Apollo’s included Low Road option is NZ$5,000 per claim on the Hitop and Endeavour and NZ$7,500 on the five bathroom models, secured in New Zealand by a card authority rather than a debited deposit, and High Road at NZ$55 or NZ$65 a day takes it to zero with windscreen and tyres left separate. The review records point the same way at handover: the fourteen entries on the Travellers Autobarn Trustpilot page cluster on mechanical failure partway through a trip and a dispute over who pays, while Apollo’s describe appliance faults appearing on the road and kit missing at the counter. A van that is not certified sleeps in a holiday park every night, so weigh these two as a total trip cost rather than as a daily rate.