CharitableBookings.com

Idea

Introduction

On CharitableBookings.com, customers can book rooms at over 600,000 hotels across 80,000 locations worldwide, with up to 95% of our room rates cheaper than all other major travel booking sites.

We then give 30% of our net booking commission back to the customer to allocate to any charity of their choice, with over 500,000 charitable causes to donate to from local projects to global endeavours.

This is a unique opportunity for people who are interested in giving to charity, as they can use their current lifestyle and purchasing habits to fund their charities.

Please note, this campaign is a part of a wider investment round since April 2019. The company have raised investment of £351,000. £235,000 of this investment has been reflected in this campaign.

Intended impact

We wanted to create a business with social purpose woven into its DNA, that could support any charity in coming closer to reaching their full potential, whilst building a sustainable and profitable business.

Many charities receive no official Government support and unfortunately, the number of donors overall is in decline. New methods of raising funds are desperately needed to enable them to work effectively.

CharitableBookings.com gives good causes, both large and small, a new way to raise unrestricted funds at zero cost. They can get started in less than an hour, it costs them nothing to run or promote, and are able to raise valuable unrestricted funds to support their cause.

With the online hotel booking market in both the US and UK combined worth over $80 billion, the revenue potential and therefore gain for charities is significant.

We view CharitableBookings.com as an opportunity to use the combined reach and marketing power harnessed by 500,000 potential charities to engage with their supporters.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Since 2015 we have:

Created partnerships with over 8,500 UK charities. This will allow us to access the charities vast networks of supporters, and we believe this would be very difficult for a competitor to replicate.

Launched bookings of over 600,000 hotels covering 80,000 worldwide destinations with up to 95% of our room rates cheaper than all other major booking sites.

Received numerous celebrity endorsements, such as Sir Martyn Lewis CBE, Zoe Wannamaker CBE, and been featured in the press, including the Sunday Times Magazine, The Daily Mail, and Country Life magazine. Our partnerships with charities allows us to capitalise on their celebrity supporters.

Developed, tested and launched our online bookings platform, which is ready to use. Launched the CharitableBookings.com app.

The founder has allocated a pool of shares to distribute to charities to incentivise sign-ups, and allow them to benefit further through any future growth of CharitableBookings.com.

Monetisation strategy

Over 70% of people in parts of Europe and the US now book their holidays and corporate travel online and do not use a tour operator. For more than half, their holiday is the most expensive online purchase they make, with 30% spending more than £2,500.

On CharitableBookings.com, these customers can save money on up to 95% of our room rates compared to other platforms, while raising money for charities of their choice at no cost to them. All things being equal, 90% of people would rather purchase from a company with a social cause.

We split the industry-standard commission between ourselves (70%) and the customer’s charity Charity Loyalty Account (30%) for them to donate as they wish.

This allows CharitableBookings.com to scale, with charities encouraging their supporters to use our platform to make their bookings.

This business model could easily be applied to other revenue streams like car hire, flights, and voucher experiences which we plan will add as the business grows.

Use of proceeds

Our platform is tested and ready to use, we now have ambitious growth plans and are ready to deploy a team to deliver these.

Use of funds will be split into two areas:

Marketing the existing platform (75%):
- Sign ups initiative with charities - working with charities to help them to market CharitableBookings.com to their supporters.
- Launching a wider marketing campaign to the general public. We would like to launch co-branded campaigns with selected, well known charities, allowing us to capitalise on their brand equity.

Building and marketing of new products (25%)
- IT support on the platform to build new products such as car hire, flights, transfers and city tours.
- Marketing of these products to the existing CharitableBookings.com users.

We'd like to offer investors rewards in this round based on level of investment:

£125 - £274 receive 20% of your investment back in £5 vouchers

£275 - £549 receive 40% of your investment back in £5 vouchers

£550 - £1074 receive 60% of your investment back in £5 vouchers

£1,075 - £2,049 receive 80% of your investment back in £5 vouchers

£2,050+ receive 100% of your investment back in £5 vouchers

Each £5 voucher is redeemable against every £100 spend on both hotel bookings and Gift Voucher Experiences on CharitableBookings.com.

Vouchers are valid for 365 days from the date of issue. Denomination of £250 vouchers can be passed on to 3rd parties as gifts.

*Please note that any discounts, rewards and/or offers listed by a company in its campaign are subject to the terms and conditions applied by that company and listed above. It is the company’s responsibility to honour such discounts, rewards and/or offers and Seedrs does not take any responsibility for them.