Liberate Luckily Lost

How it started: Luckily Lost is a new Travel Advice website starting in Thailand and hopefully soon to grow. The Idea sparked whilst working in Guesthouses around Thailand and witnessing travellers be misled by the vast quantity of inaccurate information given in guidebooks such as Lonely Planet. The website soon developed and now we are working on three sections to the website: Articles/Travel Advice, Volunteer and Do Good Opportunities and Deals/Discounts from the best businesses around the country. What it is: After Agency websites such as Hostelworld.com etc all put their fees up - it caused multiple businesses around Thailand to struggle further. 12% on every person, night and stay in accommodation could be seen as high charges but acceptable in the western world, though in Thailand when a guesthouse charges say $3 per night - it can be an enormous loss. We found a way to encourage people to book direct with accommodation (and therefore saving these fees). The Best Businesses can now host discount coupons on our website only valid when customers book direct. So a business can pass a small discount onto a customer and make a touch more at the same time. Win - Win. The same principle applies to commission paid on activites and courses around the country. Our travel advice and articles section is focused on providing information that is not bias or misleading. We dont print prices that are clearly subject to change without notice. But most of all, our articles are written by travellers themselves and not a paid journalist. The 'Do Good' section of our website is one of the things we most need financial help with. For example: There are hundreds of Agencies that send and position people to teach English in Thailand. But when we met one of the directors of the rural school board in Thailand - she made it clear that all these English teachers end up in the same places and the same schools (the schools that can pay to have them). Rural schools in thailand never get a glance at these teachers because they dont have the funding to position them. We now have the ablility to place volunteers in the areas that really need them but unfortunately it costs money to locate. Why we need financial help: Virtually every business we have been to see jumps upon the opportunity to join our website. But unfortunately we started the site without the intention of creating a business and merely travel advice. So now we have sunk nearly every penny we have into it - and just as it starting to take off we cannot support it any more. The response from businesses is always positive when we go and speak to them face to face. We have found by phone and email, peoples trust is not so great when we are such a young company. Unfortunately travelling around every day one business to the next costs money. Recently we started planning our next big project which is a clean up of one of the most beautiful mountainous towns we have ever seen, Pai, Northern Thailand. Tourism here is growing, and for some mind boggling reason the local council will not pay for bins to be put out or collected in this stunning region. We offered to pay for the bins and collection if they give us permission to place them around the town, by hot springs, the canyon etc where there is nowhere for rubbish other than the ground. Stupidly however we found ourselves having offered this with actually not enough money. So we have postponed in the hope for some cash donations. The more we can grow, accumulate businesses and visitors to our website, the more environmental and do good projects we can start or get involved with. Please help us advertise this website physically & online, and raise the required money to actually do some good. Our vision is now much further than just Thailand - but without a bit of financial help it may just end within a month. We thank you for reading, and please check out our website in its early stages: www.luckilylost.com