Secret Escapes
“Can a members-only luxury travel flash-sale platform scale globally by modernising supplier payment infrastructure while retaining margin through exclusive deals unavailable elsewhere online?”
Founded in 2011 as a UK-based members-only luxury travel deals club, Secret Escapes grew to 60 million users across 10 territories by leveraging flash-sale mechanics to fill unsold hotel inventory. The company survived COVID-19 with emergency fundraising and returned to profitability on EBITDA by 2022. In 2024 it modernised its supplier payments infrastructure by adopting Nium's virtual card solution for cross-border hotel payouts — moving from manual FX reconciliation to automated multi-currency disbursements, signalling a maturation of its embedded finance stack on the payables side.