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Secret Escapes
Luxury travel platform
- 501-1000 employees
- B2C
- Property
- Travel
- Lifestyle
- Marketplace
- Farringdon, London, UK
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Company mission
Secret Escapes' mission is to enable every member to experience inspiring escapes.
Our take
Secret Escapes operates a “members-only” site with hand-picked hotel and holiday time-limited offers. Each week it runs short ‘flash sales’ with as many as 140 sales going on at any one time, providing access to boutique experiences even to those who couldn't normally afford them.
The difference with online travel agents like Booking.com, is that Secret Escapes inspires travel by communicating great travel deals, rather than existing as a place where people visit to book trips they already have in mind. In fact, the majority of people who book through Secret Escapes say that they weren’t even planning trips to those destinations before doing so.
Like many of its travel market companions, Secret Escapes was affected by the pandemic, but survived due to an injection of investment from previously secured backers. The company smartly used the onset of mass customer service requests to better its customer service channels, and it now seems set to pursue the success it was on-course to achieve before this major upset.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Benefits
- 20% staff discount of all Secret Escape bookings
- Holiday parties and quarterly results celebrations
- 25 days holiday (excl. bank holidays)
- Work from home opportunities
Company values
- We make stuff happen - We are the people who get the job done. We ensure that what matters most happens first and fast.
- We're open-minded: We hire talented people and learn from their experience. We listen to alternate points of view (even when they feel uncomfortable).
- We love data - Extracting human insight from our data helps us make good decisions. We rigorously evidence our opinions, rather than just asserting them.
- We are good people - Ability is a given, but integrity and effort are just as crucial. We take work seriously (ourselves, not so much...) and respect our diverse identities, talents and capabilities.
- We are committed - We love a challenge, we get stuck in and we want to make an impact.
- We take care of every trip - Our millions of members trust us with their most treasured position: precious time with family and friends. We share a common goal: enable every member to experience inspiring escapes.
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
May 2020
$69.5m
SERIES E
Jul 2018
$65.7m
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $281.1m
This company has top investors
Leadership
Alex Saint
(CEO)Started his career in marketing at Unilever before founding a travel deals company in 2005 and then Secret Escapes in 2010.
Tom Valentine
(Marketplaces CEO)Studied Psychology at Oxford before starting his career at eBay in Strategy & Business Development.
People progressing
Joined as a Talent Acquisition Partner before being promoted to Head of Talent after just 2 years.