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
Ryan did an amazing job and guided me through the alternatives of different campervan rentals and helped me to find what suits me for my trip
Planning a huge trip is always a daunting experience but George managed to make the whole experience stress free and enjoyable. Everything from start to finish was personal and easy! Booking with RatPack is like being on the phone to a mate. Super informative, really friendly and we got an amazing deal. All you can ask for really. Thank you RatPack!
Huge thank you to RatPack Travel! We left it pretty late to book our campervan for Tassie and couldn't find many affordable options ourselves. I spoke to Gregg from RatPack on Whatsapp and within 10 minutes he had found us a great vehicle at an amazing price. We've just landed in Hobart and found out we've been upgraded to an even better van at the same price!! Will definitely be recommending RatPack to everyone I know who is planning to travel and see Australia the proper way! Thank you Gregg! ❤️
My booking experience was such a pleasure and quite unique. I assumed I’d be dealing with computer generated prompts but instead had 2 calls with the lovely Anna who worked with our tricky time difference (I’m in Qatar) . Within 24 hours she secured me a great deal on the van that would work best for me. Can’t wait for my December adventure and couldn’t recommend RatPack Travel enough!!
Ryan was very helpful top bloke 👍👍
Super schnelle und gleichzeitig sehr persönliche Abwicklung der Buchung. Anna war sehr freundlich und bei Fragen stets erreichbar. Macht das buchen super easy, sehr guter Service!
I had an incredible experience renting a van with them for my road trip in New Zealand. Ben was exceptionally helpful and made the whole process smooth and enjoyable. We had a pleasant chat, and they were accommodating when I needed to make changes to my booking. Highly recommend this rental company for anyone exploring New Zealand! Can’t wait to get in the road.
Cannot recommend these guys enough!! We recently booked our 3 week holiday in NZ. We would be lying if we said the process of looking for a motorhome/campervan was easy. We spent days tossing up options that hardly met our budget. After a few days of stressing out like a pair of lunatics we came across RatPack Travel, lo and behold they were the saviours we desperately needed! We hopped on a call with Chris and got chatting. Within the hour we locked in a spacious motorhome (with insurance) that met our budget - WE’RE SO STOKED!! We wholeheartedly recommend RatPack Travel to any future holiday makers out there looking for a fast, reliable and friendly service! THANK YOU CHRIS!!! ❤️🔥
Haven't started my journey yet so can't say much but so far the customer service specifically from Ben has been incredible and he was able to find me a great deal and I'm very excited.
A huge thanks to George and Jenna for a great service! Kind, accomodating, and effective!
Anna has been really helpful and made sure I got the best deal for my last minute booking. She made it really easy as I had nothing to do, except for answer questions and review the details to confirm the booking. She was very professional and also answered my questions and gave me tips. The service is free for users as they get paid by the rental company. Thank you to Sammy and Tammy as well for finding a solution for me :). Will recommend your services.
Super helpful and friendly staff. They helped me plan an adventure with my dog in a rental camper and got the best deals. Thank you Ryan F and RatPack.
George was super helpful. He got us the absolute best deal and saved us so much money on our van!
Gregg was great to work with! Made the process so smooth and effortless!
These guys are lifesavers! Needed to book a van for ten days right before arriving in Australia and they did all the heavy lifting finding the van! Huge thank you to Anna for being incredibly friendly and helpful - RatPack is the best!
