Rachel Tanya Lowe MBE (born 1977) is an English board games developer. She attended the University of Portsmouth in order to earn a law degree. As a student she had a part time job as a taxi driver which is when she came up with the idea of the board game Destination Portsmouth.[1] She continued the idea Destination London, which is now one of the top selling games at Hamleys, beating Monopoly and Twister.[1]
She appeared on the BBC2 television show Dragons' Den in the UK where her pitch for investment was rejected. However, she believes the exposure was what enabled her to succeed with the board game, even though the investors on the show criticised her in a variety of ways.[2]
The Destination game can be made specific to places and events. Destination has now been reworked for London, Paris, Suffolk, Scotland, Norwich - and so on. This appeals to tourists and to locals who like to own a game which puts their locality "on the map". Because riding in a taxi is an experience universal to every city, the game can be tailored to any part of the world.
Lowe continues to develop the game, taking it in different directions. Working independently, she negotiated a deal with The Walt Disney Corporation in order to bring their Pixar CGI characters to one version of the game. This version she calls Destination Animation.
At the end of October 2008, she released Destination Hogwarts after negotiation with Warner Bros.. This fully licensed edition of the game is set in Hogwarts, the school in which J K Rowling set her famous Harry Potter stories. The players are students at the school, amassing House Points on their journeys around it.
Lowe was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.[3]
Despite signs of success RTL Games Ltd went into administration in May 2009. BBC Panorama featured an episode on Rachel Lowe which explored the causes of the business' failure after problems following the launch of the Harry Potter game, Destination Hogwarts.
Rachel is now working on a new project with Simon Dolan.