Boost for travel agents as Race Across the World grips viewers | Television

Television

Viewing figures for the BBC One series are rising, along with bookings at travel companies that serve east Asia

No celebrities, no luxuries and a miserly £20,000 in prize money. On paper the BBC One series Race Across the World never looked like a hit.

And yet the travel programme, in which backpackers battle across distant sections of the planet, is now into its fourth season with audiences rising faster than a tuk-tuk driver can get you down Bangkok’s Khao San Road.

This time 5.5 million viewers have watched five two-person…