How to get your partner off the couch and into a campervan this Easter

You know the conversation. You've had it seventeen times.

You say: "Hey, Easter's coming up. What about a camping trip?"

They say: "Yeah… or we could just book an Airbnb."

The polite rejection. The gentle pivot. The look that says I love you, but I'm not sleeping on a deflating air mattress while possums raid the Esky.

They're not wrong to be hesitant. They're just working with old information. The soggy tent, the midnight spider encounter, the shower block queue at 6am? That's not what you're proposing. Not if you play this right.

So let's get tactical. What follows is a proper playbook for bringing your reluctant other half around to an Easter road trip, without guilt trips, ultimatums, or passive-aggressive Instagram reels about "people who never try new things."

1. Stop saying "camping"

Seriously. The word is sabotaging you.

When your partner hears "camping," their brain pulls up a highlight reel of discomfort. Cold nights. No phone signal. Questionable toilet situations. Waking up with a rock-shaped bruise on their hip. And that's a completely fair response based on what most people's camping experiences looked like, back in 1997.

So change the language. You're not going camping. You're hiring a mobile apartment for the long weekend. A proper queen bed, a kitchen, a fridge, and depending on which van you choose, a hot shower and a flushing toilet. If you need convincing that this is a real thing, have a look at what's available in Sydney or Melbourne and scroll through the photos. These aren't tents.

Lisa, a Camplify owner from the Central Coast, puts it well: "When people pick up my Jayco, I tell them: this isn't camping. This is a holiday house that comes with better views."

Lead with comfort, not canvas. And if your partner needs more proof that camping can feel like glamping, show them.

2. Figure out what they're actually afraid of

Time to put your amateur sociologist hat on. When someone says "I'd rather get an Airbnb," they're almost never doing a rational cost-benefit analysis. What's going on underneath is usually one of three things.

They're afraid of looking useless. They don't know how to work a gas stove in a caravan, reverse a trailer, or set up an awning. Nobody wants to feel incompetent on their own holiday, especially if they suspect you'll be the capable one while they stand around holding a tent peg like a spare part.

They need predictability. Hotels and Airbnbs are known quantities. A camping trip feels chaotic. Weather, bugs, things that break, no Wi-Fi when you need it. For someone who manages stress through planning, that's not exciting. It's a four-day anxiety exercise.

They don't see themselves as "a camping person." It doesn't match their identity. Asking them to camp feels a bit like asking them to become someone else for the weekend.

Your job is to address the fear they're actually feeling, not the excuse they're giving you.

For the first: tell them Camplify owners walk you through everything before your trip. Mark from Wollongong spends a solid 45 minutes with every first-timer, covering the water pump, gas, USB chargers, the lot. You're not being tossed in the deep end. You've got a real person in your corner. (And if they want a head start, our camping for beginners guide covers everything they'd want to know.)

For the second: hand them the planning reins. Let them choose the caravan park, pick the van, map the route. Control is the antidote to anxiety. Give it to them.

For the third, keep reading.

3. Let the van sell itself

This one does most of the heavy lifting, and it takes five minutes on the couch together.

Open Camplify. Find a campervan or motorhome near you, one of the really nice ones. And just show them the photos. Don't say "let's book this." Don't pitch anything. Hand them your phone and say, "Look what I found."

Real estate agents hold open houses for a reason. The visual does work that words can't. When your partner scrolls through a spotless Winnebago interior with leather seats, a proper cooktop, ambient lighting and a bed bigger than the one in your spare room, their mental image of "camping" starts falling apart.

If you find one with a bathroom, you've probably already won.

Most people don't realise this either: you don't even need to collect the thing. Plenty of Camplify owners offer caravan delivery straight to your campsite, set up and ready to go. You rock up and your holiday starts. Hard to argue you're "roughing it" when someone's parked a fully equipped home-on-wheels under a tree by the river for you.

Worried about what it'll cost? A campervan hire is often cheaper than the Airbnb your partner was eyeing, especially over Easter when holiday rental prices go through the roof.

4. Pitch their holiday, not yours

This is where most of us stuff it up, and it's worth being honest about.

When you pitch a camping trip, you're pitching your dream. Campfire cooking. Sunrise walks. Disconnecting from everything. That lights you up. But your partner? Maybe their ideal Easter involves sleeping in, decent coffee, reading a book without anyone needing anything from them, and eating food that wasn't cooked on a single gas burner.

A campervan trip can be all of those things. But you need to spell that out, because they won't connect those dots on their own.

Try something like: "I know you've been flat out. What if we hired a campervan, drove somewhere beautiful, and you didn't have to organise a thing? No cooking if you don't want to, we'll stop at that café you love on the way down. No packing up camp, we just drive when we feel like it. You can sit in a camp chair with your book and a view that'd cost $400 a night in a hotel."

You're not selling camping. You're selling relief. The campervan is just the thing that makes the escape possible. If you're travelling as a couple, have a look at these road trip ideas built for two. Might help you paint the picture.

5. Pitch one night, not four

Behavioural scientists call this "foot in the door," and it works a treat on reluctant campers.

Don't propose a four-night caravan odyssey. Propose one night. Maybe two. "Let's just try it for one night over Easter. If you hate it, we drive to the nearest town and I book us a hotel. No questions asked."

Two things happen. The stakes drop to almost nothing, because one night is survivable even if it's awful. And your partner gets an exit. Which, weirdly, makes them far more willing to say yes. Same reason free trials work. Nobody commits to a gym without seeing the inside first.

What actually happens: after one night of falling asleep to kookaburras instead of traffic, waking up to a view instead of a ceiling, and drinking coffee outside with no agenda and no checkout time, they won't want to leave.

Emma, who shares her campervan through Camplify from Newcastle, says she hears it every year: "People book two nights and then message me asking to extend. Every Easter, without fail."

6. Kill every friction point before they bring it up

This one's not glamorous, but it's the most important strategy on this list. If you want your partner to say yes, you have to make it effortless for them. That means solving every micro-objection before it leaves their mouth.

"What about the packing?" You do it. Make the list. Load the car. All they need to bring is their pillow and their book.

"What if it rains?" You're in a campervan, not a tent. Roof, walls, heating, kitchen. Rain's actually lovely when you're dry and warm with nowhere to be.

"What about the kids?" Caravans are built for this. Bunks for the kids, separate space for you. Everyone gets their own territory. Honestly better than a hotel room where you're all crammed together pretending to whisper while the kids are down by 7:30. (If you're bringing the family, the first-time family caravanners survival guide is worth a quick read.)

"I don't want to drive a massive vehicle." Then don't. Pick a smaller campervan. Or skip it entirely and have one delivered. Camplify owners across Australia offer delivery, so you can have a caravan set up at Shoal Bay or Jervis Bay and just drive your own car. Check what's near you in Brisbane or Perth. Plenty of owners deliver.

"What about the toilet situation?" Many campervans and motorhomes on Camplify have their own bathroom. Done. And even if yours doesn't, most caravan parks have amenities that'd put your local gym to shame.

Don't wait for the objections. Solve them in advance. Every friction point you remove is one less reason to say no, and one step closer to that grudging "Alright, fine, let's do it."

7. Play the memory card

Save this one for when you need it.

Nobody looks back fondly on interchangeable hotel rooms and long weekends spent scrolling their phone in bed. But people do remember the Easter they drove down the coast with the windows open, stumbled on a beach nobody else knew about, cooked something together while the sun dropped, and just stopped for a few days.

You don't need to give a lecture on happiness research. Just say something like: "I reckon we'll actually remember this one. I don't want to look back and think, yeah, we sat in another rental watching Netflix."

Not guilt. Not pressure. Just the honest observation that some holidays vanish from your memory the week you get home, and some stay with you for years. A campervan trip at Easter. The autumn light, the slower pace, the long mornings with nowhere to be. That's the kind that sticks.

Now go get them

Your partner isn't anti-adventure. They're anti-discomfort, or anti-chaos, or anti-what-they-think-camping-is. You don't need to convince them they're wrong. You need to show them a version of this trip that sounds good to them.

Hiring a campervan or caravan through Camplify helps, because it sits right in the gap between "roughing it" and "proper holiday." You get the freedom, the views, the campfire. They get the real bed, the hot shower, the kitchen that works.

Go browse what's near you, whether that's Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, or Perth, and find something that'll make their eyes go wide. Pick it up yourself or have it delivered to your campsite. The hardest part is already done once they say yes.

Then just leave the page open on the kitchen bench. Casually. Like you weren't even thinking about it.

Easter's nearly here. They're closer to saying yes than you reckon.

Need a starting point? Here's where to look:

• Campervans, motorhomes and caravans for hire near you →

• Best road trips from Sydney →

• Best road trips from Melbourne →

• Road trips from Brisbane →

• Best camping destinations near Perth →