Member Article

UK's leading global adventure events company Rat Race post record sales

Rat Race is the UK’s largest provider of global adventure challenges, offering everyday people the chance to explore once in a lifetime, bucket list locations. Born out of founder Jim Mee’s passion for travel, the company which is headquartered in York, has hosted over 500 UK and international events in 20 countries since they began in 2004, with the number of international events set to double to 40 by the end of 2023.

Growing from one event in Edinburgh at inception to operating 50 trips and unique adventures that span the globe in 2022, the leading adventure events company has announced a projected turnover of £4m and a £300k profit for 2021/22, marking the period as their biggest year of sales to date.

Rat Race offers some of the most authentic and challenging adventures in the business, visiting destinations people may never have heard of but will be fascinated to go to once they have. Rat Race’s mantra is to be achievable and aspire to cater for everyone’s needs, whether you’re a first-time adventurer or an experienced explorer.

This year alone Rat Race is offering people the chance to journey across the Namib Desert in Namibia to reach the most famous shipwreck on Earth, a Trans Andean Coast to Coast cycling adventure from the Pacific to the Atlantic, a 100-mile journey across a frozen lake in Outer Mongolia, a top to toe traverse of Dominica’s entire nature island, and the ultimate Panama Coast to Coast challenge that is claimed to be tougher than the Marathon Des Sables, to name a few.

Dedicated to expert event management and unwavering commitment to safety throughout, the Rat Race team have built strong relationships with locals on the ground to make experiences as authentic as possible, to the extent that they are the only adventure events company in the world to be running the routes they envision, making them truly one of a kind. They are also the sole guide group to be granted permission to cross never before ventured areas such as the national parks in Namibia and Mongolia.

These bucket list trips are mostly envisaged by Founder Jim Mee, who has been finding adventure anywhere and everywhere – from city centres to the mountain tops - for as long as he can remember. Starting as an event professional with Red Bull and developing a love for the outdoors living in Scotland and taking part in a series of expeditions around the world when he was 23 years old, it was in 2003 on the side of a mountain in Peru that Jim’s idea of Rat Race was born.

Jim recalls, “I was climbing in Peru, where I was coming to the end of a long period of expeditions and was getting a bit tired of all the snow and ice! I decided I wanted to set up a business, initially so that I could fund more trips but ultimately, I wanted a fresh challenge. I took a notebook with me (which I still have!) and in a tent on the mountain Alpamayo, in the Cordillera mountains of Peru, I drafted out a concept for an event called the ‘Rat Race Urban Adventure.’

He expands on making Rat Race a reality: “The idea was to present a bit of an ironic and quirky take on adventure -hence the name Rat Race, showing that you could have an adventure on your own doorstep, and that it’s possible for this to be accessible to anyone. The format involved taking adventure sports such as running, mountain biking, kayaking and abseiling out of the wild places and putting them on the streets of the city. It was well received, albeit the numbers involved in that inaugural Edinburgh event were much smaller than they are today as these types of mass participation events didn’t really exist in the same way, then.

Fast forward to today and we have now expanded and pivoted our offering post COVID towards international and multi-day bucket list challenges – allowing us to make peoples’ sense of adventure and wanderlust a reality following those dark times during lockdown, when no-one could go anywhere or do anything.“

Known to have even come up with dream destinations in his sleep, Jim not only has unrivalled experience in the industry, but is passionate about offering adventures that create sense of journey, are exciting, different and well thought-out. He has personally delivered an excess of 500 stand-along events and has led expeditions on six continents, doing a deep dive into the historical and cultural significance of every trip that’s organised, which is another reason as to why each trip is so special.

“In general, we are trying where possible to deliver events with a sense of journey. That could be ‘A to B’ like a coast to coast journey, or have a tangible objective, such as the Race to the Wreck in Namibia. Latterly, we want to really focus on that element of journey as this really resonates with people as a reason for undertaking them.”

To make the world-first adventures a reality, Rat Race also offer people of all walks of life a chance to be one of the first to map out the trailblazing routes as part of a Test Pilot. The Test Pilots are pioneering forays into the Great Unknown – be that unknown locations, formats or both. The aim is to test and prove never-been-done, incredible journeys to extreme places are possible when met with significant logistical and safety planning. Exclusive locations such as a circumnavigation via kayak, pack raft and foot of Bikini Atoll in the Marshal Islands, infamous for the world’s first nuclear tests and basically the furthest ‘off-grid’ you can go on Earth, as well as crossing the notorious Darién Gap in Central America, are the types of locations that are the calling card of Rat Race’s Test Pilot programme.

These exhilarating group trips are spearheaded by Head of Expeditions Abbi Naylor, a highly trained explorer with more than 10 years of experience under her belt. When Covid put an abrupt end to her freelance life as a full-time expedition leader, she secured her dream job working for Rat Race – putting all of the skills she has developed and created into once in a lifetime trips for people all over the world. Abbi said ’Not only do I get to dream up extreme adventures to enjoy myself, but I also get to guide participants along with me.“

Adding to this, Jim said “We are always seeking to innovate in the marketplace and never follow the crowd. No more-so is this true now of the new Bucket List, Test Pilot and other international formats we are operating. These are part expedition, part event, but totally unique and utterly Rat Race in the way we have formatted them and brought them to the market.

“When you go to places that are genuinely remote and off the beaten track, of which these become fewer and fewer as the world becomes more connected–this really does give rise that proposition of uncertain outcome. And for us, that is the definition of adventure.

“We want to share these trips with like-minded, regular folk. We are not professional explorers and we do not position ourselves as such. That is absolutely key to the Rat Race way. Extraordinary adventures for regular folks”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lucie Hayes .