UNITED KINGDOM—While luxury travelers are willing to pay more money for an exceptional experience, even they like savings and look for the best deal possible.
Secret Escapes, based here, is a flash-sale website that caters to the luxury guest. Every week, the site runs short sales lasting around 10 days each. Rob Day, general manager of Secret Escapes, explained, “Selecting a destination and a hotel is a matter of taste, and getting it at the right price was more a question of common sense. We wanted to fuse these two ideas together to ensure our members only saw luxury hotels that we handpicked according to our criteria [using review sites as well as site visits], and ensuring that we only ever sold these hotels at an exclusive price, lower than anywhere else online.”
Day noted that there are a number of benefits for hotels. “Members sign up to receive luxury hotel offers, so Secret Escapes has a fantastic database of affluent potential customers who are more likely to spend more and stay longer,” he explained, noting that the typical member travels several times a year. “With regard to where people are most interested in traveling to, it tends to be seasonal. We’ve had huge selling deals for Kerala [India], the Caribbean and Northern Lights tours in Iceland,” he said. “Tuscany and Portugal are also popular destinations for those on the East Coast, with Miami, New York, San Diego and the Napa Valley being the domestic destinations of choice.”
According to the executive, nine out of 10 members who booked hadn’t planned the trip before seeing it advertised. “This not only shows the trust that our members have in us to provide them with the quality they expect but shows our ability to fill those rooms and bring new travelers to the hotels’ doorsteps,” said Day.
Secret Escapes incorporates a mobile, social and multimedia strategy so hotels that are signed up receive the benefits of the multichannel outreach and visibility, said Day. Once a hotel deal posts and is sent out, the hotels receive an extra marketing push as an additional benefit to signing up, being seen by more than two million U.S. subscribers, as well as up to 12 million members worldwide.
“It is absolutely risk free for the properties to appear on Secret Escapes. The marketing that our database gives hotels is huge exposure at no upfront cost; Secret Escapes only charges commission once the rooms are sold,” he said. In addition, hotels are also able to manage the stock they give to Secret Escapes.
—Nicole Carlino