Book with iSawTheSea - and someone deserving gets a break too!
iSawTheSea is a not for profit service developed by Steve and Paul Walsh, the founders of the popular hotel booking service Laterooms.com. Although we're no longer involved with Laterooms.com, we still like the hotel business and we love the internet.
The idea behind iSawTheSea is very simple.
When you book a hotel through an online booking agent such as Laterooms.com or Bookings.com, the hotel pays a commission back to the agent.
Using iSawtheSea.com, you can search and compare prices from all the major booking agents to find the best deal. Then, when you are ready to book we link you through to the agent to complete your booking.
YOU DONT PAY ANY MORE BY USING OUR SERVICE.
In return, the agent gives a good slice of their commission back to us for helping to generate the booking. We then use this slice of commission to pay for others to get a break.
Paul started the beach ball rolling when, in 2008, he organised and paid for a party of Romanian orphans to visit the seaside for the very first time.
Look what he did
"We sent 17 children from the orphanage by train with 2 carers to the black sea Mamaia for 10 days towards the tail end of the season a little bit - mainly to get a slightly better room rate - but also less crazy for the carers i think - only one of them had ever seen the sea before
We popped in on them towards the end - they loved it - the older ones did not go to bed hardly just stayed on the beach playing cards, midnight swims, watching the sunset then the sunrise!
They are great because they are all in the same boat so they have a family bond and look out for each other - the older ones look after the younger ones etc.
The only sad thing is that we could not do it for all 70, and of course this year we did not get chance to do it again "
No doubt the cynics amongst you will question how much of the commission we earn actually goes to help those who deserve a break - well, all we can say is that after covering our costs, every penny will go to a deserving cause.
What I can tell you is that we have put £50,000 into a yellow plastic "Bookit" to get things going. And as your booking commissions come in (hopefully by the spadeful) the bucket will stay topped up and grow.
We aim to list on this site every break, holiday and overnight stay we finance thanks to your bookings.
You will have the option to be given details of who your hotel booking helped - they'll even send you a postcard by e-mail to say thanks. And we will tell you openly and clearly how much we have coming in through bookings and how much going out to help deserving individuals.
Given that we currently employ only a small team, our overheads are not great.
