Another joyous success for the Travel Trade Crusade and its organisers and co-founders Sarah Archer and Nick Joyce. The time and effort they put into organising an event like this does not go unappreciated or unnoticed. In total everyone collectively raised over £47,000 for a variety of different charities. We were fortunate enough to gain £8000 for ABTA LifeLine, to support our travel people who are currently in need and whose circumstances depend on our support. Since the event finished the total raised continued to rise, so far is has grown by an astonishing £2,000 since the results were unveiled on the last night. Since the creation of the Travel Trade Crusade in 2013 the organization has managed to raise £156,000, this year being the most successful event that they have run to date. We even managed to raise more than the previous event in 2017, despite having 5 less teams and we broke through the target value of £40,000 by a long shot!
The event was both challenging and enjoyable as any crusade should be! We rallied around Europe in a car for 3-5 days taking part in challenges whilst promoting our charities and sponsors along the way. Supporting ABTA LifeLine we had the ABTA LifeLine Celebs, Avis Budget Group and Bright Consortium. A lot of creativity from all teams left us with such a brilliant variety of costumes and uniquely transformed vehicles. Take a look at the pictures and see if you can find yourself a favourite, or maybe even spot a familiar character or two.
It wasn’t all play! We would compete every day to win more money towards our charity. The challenges were again of the creative variety. If you want to see what our team the ABTA LifeLine Celebs take a look at our Facebook and twitter page. Judge kindly as these videos and pictures were made during pit stops and edited in the back of a car during our journey through winding countryside!
Day 1: The Spice Girls head to the 'Versalles of Lorraine' and with a little bit of artistic license recreated the statue of Lasalle. Whilst we didn't win this round we're very proud of the resulting image! It's definitely worth taking a look at our shadow puppet skills. Some hilarious entries from all of the teams, if you'd like to see them check out on the Travel Trade Crusade's vimeo upload.
Day 2: The Blues Brothers adventure to Hockenheim! An amazing day where we were able to take all of the brilliant costumes and cars of the crusade onto the Hockenheim race track. The challenge of the day was to create the funniest photo or video of Russ and Dennis (who funded the whole Hockenheim adventure). This was well organised as it was a great way to use the time waiting in the car park for it all to begin. Truly a very memorable day for us and the bewildered Porsche racers we left at the track!
Day 3: We had a mixed cast of celebs starring Cheryl Cole, Kylie Minogue, Axel Rose and Slash. Our final day to wrap up our ongoing challenges (3 Day challenge) and to finish the day 3 challenge of 'Avast! Me Hearties!'. Sometimes the hardest challenges are the ones you have the most creative freedom with, as this was another choose your own challenge it left a lot of variety between entries. We went for a 'up a creek, without a paddle' theme for our nautical challenge, to take a look at all of our challenge entries check out our twitter page and our TTC19 posts. The last day ended spectacularly on the SS Rotterdam where the amazing film crew that had been following us for the last few days in the heat, had put together a movie montage of all the shenanigans that we'd been up to. Not only that but the grand reveal of how much this whole event has raised for charity! An astonishing £45,000 (now £47,183!), which was £5000 over the target value.
This crusade has been said to be the last one, however we’ve heard these words before; yet TTC19 still came into fruition. Maybe we’ll be fortunate enough to see a TTC20/21? We must keep our fingers crossed. If so, there’s a lot of work to be done if we plan to beat the TTC19 results.
So, if you haven’t already, take a look at the TTC Twitter and TTC Facebook page and keep your ear to the floor any more up and coming events to support (or maybe even take part in). Whether it’s to support us or another charity, the more positive feedback and interest expressed, the more likely another wonderful event will run. Show your support by either following the TTC page or dropping us a donation to help us reach out to more people in need and make the TTC19 even more successful.
A big thanks to all those that sponsored us during this event, we couldn’t have done it without you.