RatPack Travel was born in 2016, founded on the belief that travellers should be provided with a premium service.
We hold the same belief today. We’re a tight team, working on multiple time zones – here to help YOU plan your trip.
We’ve covered every mile of the locations we promote. We help you decide on the best options and help you save money along the way!
Here is how it all began!
Feeling a little lost and lacking any real direction after graduating from University in 2011, Sammy our owner and operator decided to book a one-way ticket out of the UK.
After scraping together the savings he made that summer, Sammy headed to South East Asia and on to Australia and NZ.
Between 2012 and 2014 he completed a full circuit of Australia (covering 26,000 km’s) and BackPack’d the North and South Island of New Zealand!
Before launching RatPack Travel in 2016, Sammy worked for a corporate high street agency.
No morals, no ethics and poor customer service… The experience inspired him to start a polar opposite service in the form of RatPack.
He quickly established a small space attached to a hostel in Byron Bay. Away from the hustle of the high street opposite the beach, the space, suited the brand perfectly.
The team started to grow as we helped more travellers plan their personalised trips…
We established relationships with every reputable campervan rental and tour company in the game. This allowed us to have the capacity to book ANY tour or rental for our RatPackers.
Rather than trying to become the biggest, we made it our mission to become the best.
We made the decision to step away from the hostel space and operate purely online.
The challenge was to keep it as personalised as booking in person via our website.
We developed a slick system allowing our customers to communicate with us directly via, FB, WhatsApp, email, text, phone or even Skype!
Jan – June
We finally reached our first goal > having gained more 5 star reviews than any other Aussie BackPacker Travel service!
As our loyal customers, AKA RatPackers began to spread the word we needed a manager to handle the enquiries and maintain our level of service.
After an extensive trip around Oz Mikey, Sammy’s cousin became the manager on Australia time in our HQ in Byron Bay, Australia.
July – Dec
After KICK starting the year with an EPIC trip to Fraser Island with a group of LEGENDS, Sammy headed back to the UK with one mission… to build a team in Europe.
We wanted to create a 24-hour inbox so that enquiries were always answered no matter what time they were sent. This enhanced our customer service levels and the feedback was EPIC!
We were now the agency that operated around the clock 364 (you gotta be off on Christmas) days a year.
In the March of 2020, the world stopped!
However, we didn’t… it was imperative for Sammy to keep the core team in place and we all knew how important it was to help those customers who were forced to cancel due to the global pandemic.
Rather than sending generic emails to customers, we made it our mission between the team to speak to EVERY customer via phone call in person. Yep, we didn’t sleep much!
As the domestic market re-opened we helped hundreds of Aussie and Kiwi’s book trips in their own backyard.
We continued to promote travel across our social media channels for those people across the globe that were stuck and needed to know there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Many overseas customers were and still are booking open dated itineraries so that they are prepared for when the world fully opens.
Since July 2022 the Aussie & NZ borders opened to international tourism. We’ve added to our team in our Australian office in Byron Bay and across the pond in our European HQ located in Holland.
We continue to deliver a truly unique personalised experience when it comes to booking your Aussie and NZ travels and our team will do its utmost to earn your 5* review.
We can’t wait for 2023… let’s call it the year of TRAVEL!
From our RatPackers
Ben was amazing and went above and beyond to find us amazing deals and exactly what we were looking for. He did it all in record time too! We were very close to our travel date and Ben was doing so much for us so quickly! Definitely recommend
Mikey was fantastic from start to finish. He was so efficient and easy to talk to. 10/10 for him, would highly recommend the service. So happy I chose to go with RatPack Travel.
Friendly helpful and accommodating. Thanks Ryan. You made it all very easy.
Great service from Ben, came back with answers within minutes and walked us through the process, great experience, thanks Ben
George was fantastic, I came in very vague and he gave me the time and examples to lock in what we were looking for. He found great deals and was easy to talk to - he was able to give tips about the process without putting any pressure. Would recommend using Ratpack.
Ben made it so fast and easy for us to reserve our camper van for our trip in the fall! Excellent service!’n
I had a call with Ryan who was super nice, knowledgable and made me feel really at ease with making my decision. He asked me all about what I want to do and achieve on my trip, although I didn’t really want to pack too much in… nor gave much detail on what I want to do, he gave options and ideas for me to look into. He used his own experience as an example which was really helpful to hear and made me feel like I’m right at home with RatPack, I knew then I was making the right choice by talking to him. He answered any questions I had, even if they seemed like silly questions to ask. The booking process is really easy and straight forward, they do all the hard parts for you. Once Ryan talked me through my options, I made my selection and all I had to do was enter my card details for the deposit and I was done! Thanks to Ryan’s detailed and calm approach I knew I was booking with the right company/team. I can’t wait for the next step!!
George has been amazing. He put together the costings for our trip, and then I changed the dates completely and he redid everything and said it wasn’t a problem. I felt that he worked hard to get me the best deal, advised me which pickup town was the best deal, when was the best time to travel, and how I could save money by adding a day to our trip (yes, it was cheaper to go for 21 days than go for 20!). George sent through mountains of advice on travel destinations, camping sites etc. I would definitely recommend RatPack Travel and George.
The Ratpack team and specifically Ryan f were great for booking our dream New Zealand campervan trip. Ryan worked hard over several days trying to find the best possible deals for us and the communication was great with updates regularly. He was able to get us 2 vans that out did any other quotes that we received and we are really looking forward to our trip with Ratpack being by our side. Thanks a lot Ryan F!
Lovely people, more than helpful.
I am so stoked with the service I received from Ryan at RatPack Travel. He was so proactive and on the ball to help me with all my questions and variations. He gave me several options and gave me other things to look at to make sure I had all that I needed. Ryan did all the legwork in following up the availability of the type of van I wanted. If you are wanting to go on a Campervan holiday no matter how long or short, I would recommend RatPack Travel! They will be you support in every step of the process, in the lead up and while on the road. Thanks Ryan! You're a legend! They are a one stop shop when it comes to sourcing campervans and motorhomes from different providers! I nearly forgot to say - he got me a great deal on a newer model. ;)
Thijs and Gemma were just so lovely to communicate with and explained everything so well. Booked us our campervan seamlessly, and with a great deal too 😊 10/10 service from them both!! Couldn’t recommend more! 😊
Ben was super helpful, easy to deal with and always got back to all my questions nice and quickly, with all the campervan options out there we really didn’t know what one to go with but Ben did all the searching for us and made the whole process really simple.
Amazing and outstanding customer service, Ryan exceeded all expectations, he and his team found the perfect deal for us, if you are looking for renting a campervan in NZ or Oz, don’t look for more! Go straight to them and you’ll see you are in the best hands! 🙌
Greg was superb! We told him what we wanted in a camper van. Even with less than two weeks notice, he didn’t disappoint. We loved our camper van and it was perfect for the two of us!
