HotelPlanner.com to debut in Clipper Round the World Yacht Race

by Morgan Kasmarik / Clipper Ventures on 28 Jun 2017 HotelPlanner.com, the leading online provider of group and individual travel services, will make its global ocean-racing debut as a Team Partner in the eleven-month duration Clipper 2017-18 Round the World Yacht Race, which will start from Liverpool, UK, on Sunday, 20 August, 2017.

The HotelPlanner.com yacht will be one of twelve teams participating in the eleventh edition of the unique 40,000 nautical mile, Clipper Race, which was founded in 1995 by legendary sailor Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail solo non-stop around the globe in 1968-69, to allow everyday people the opportunity to follow his experiences.

After signing the agreement, Sir Robin said: “We are very pleased to welcome HotelPlanner.com as a Team Partner for the Clipper 2017-18 Race.

“As a new addition to the Clipper Race family, HotelPlanner.com will bring fresh energy and outlook to their team, which will be needed during their gruelling journey around the world. Like the Clipper Race, HotelPlanner.com is a leader in its field, and its experience in providing the best group hotel booking options means our crew and their supporters will have a fantastic experience in every stopover port.

“I wish the HotelPlanner.com Skipper and team all the very best for their campaign.”

Founded in 2002, HotelPlanner.com provides hotel booking services to 3,000 groups per day in the global group travel market. The company's robust technology and automated rate checkers provide customers with the guaranteed lowest available rates from a network of more than 100,000 quality hotel partners worldwide.

“We are honoured and excited to partner with the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race,” said HotelPlanner.com Co-founder and CEO Tim Hentchel.

“As a travel technology company always striving to set industry firsts, we respect the extreme endurance, confidence, and fearlessness exhibited by the event’s brainchild Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, and the sailors who set out to confront Mother Nature’s most epic challenge.”

As an Official Team Partner, HotelPlanner.com will use the global reach of the Clipper Race to increase brand awareness, particularly in key destinations across the six continents visited on the eleven-month duration race route.

HotelPlanner.com is proud to be a leading provider of hotel services for professional and university sports teams and events worldwide, and the Clipper Race is no exception. HotelPlanner.com will provide the best rates for the Clipper Race crew and supporters in every port. It will also run competitions at stopovers for locals in an effort to create buzz for the HotelPlanner.com Skipper and team.

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is unlike any other in the world. Over 710 people, from all walks of life and representing more than 40 different nationalities, will compete in the full circumnavigation or one of more of the eight legs that make up what is undoubtedly the world’s greatest ocean adventure. They will sail on a fleet of twelve identical 70-foot ocean racing yachts, each led by a professional skipper.

Over the past twenty years, almost 5,000 non-professional crew, many with no previous sailing experience, have been turned into ocean racers through the Clipper Race. A full circumnavigation however, remains a rare accomplishment; more people have climbed Mount Everest than raced across the world’s oceans under sail.

The Clipper 2017-18 Race will start in Liverpool on Sunday 20 August 2017 and return almost a year later on Saturday 28 July 2018, after following a global route which includes stopovers in Punta del Este, Cape Town, Fremantle, Sydney, Hobart, East Coast Australia (Port TBC), Sanya, Qingdao, Seattle, Panama, New York, and Derry Londonderry.