How a Travel Platform Grew From 1 to 35 Employees in Spain in Under Two Years Without a Compliance Team
The Challenge
Luxury Escapes, an Australian online travel platform, needed to expand rapidly into European markets — specifically Spain — to grow its customer acquisition and supplier partnerships in a region with distinct employment law, payroll requirements, and benefits obligations. The company had no in-house expertise in Spanish or UK employment legislation and no local legal infrastructure to support compliant hiring. Building that expertise internally would be slow and expensive relative to the opportunity. Moving fast in Europe required the ability to hire immediately and compliantly across jurisdictions without establishing a full local entity and HR function in each market.
The Solution
Deel provided two complementary services to cover the two EU markets: Employer of Record (EOR) for Spanish operations, handling all compliance requirements, payroll processing, and employee benefits management; and Deel Payroll for UK operations, ensuring ongoing compliance with evolving local legislation. Both markets were managed through a single platform with unified dashboards and AI-powered support for compliance queries — giving Luxury Escapes visibility across both European operations without a dedicated local HR team in either market.
The Outcome
Luxury Escapes grew its Spanish team from a single Barcelona employee to 35 staff members in under two years, maintaining full compliance with Spanish employment law throughout the expansion. UK payroll operations ran in parallel without requiring a separate vendor or local compliance function. Chief of Staff Julia Davis described Deel as "a one-stop shop that solved problems around payroll, HR, and local expertise," enabling the company to expand at speed without devoting internal resources to jurisdictional research.
Strategic Takeaway
Online travel platforms are geographically high-leverage businesses: a team in a local market can drive disproportionate supplier and customer acquisition value, but only if that team can be hired and retained compliantly. Luxury Escapes' challenge was not just hiring speed — it was the confidence to commit to a market knowing that employment law complexity would not create liability after the fact. The 35-hire, two-year result in Spain is a signal that EOR enabled the company to operate with full commitment in the market rather than cautiously. The dual-market architecture — EOR for Spain, Deel Payroll for UK — also illustrates a common pattern for companies expanding across jurisdictions: different markets require different employment structures, and a single platform managing both removes the coordination cost of multi-vendor HR.
- Geographic hiring confidence is a strategic asset in market-expansion businesses. The ability to commit to 35 hires in a new country over two years — rather than hedging with contractors — is only possible when compliance risk is absorbed by the EOR.
- Multi-market expansion requires flexible employment structures. Spain (EOR) and UK (payroll) needed different approaches; a platform that handles both eliminates the fragmentation of managing separate vendors per jurisdiction.
- Local market teams are a competitive moat in travel. Supplier relationships, destination knowledge, and customer trust accrue to people on the ground — but only after compliance infrastructure makes hiring them viable.
See how Deel can help your business address similar challenges.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no cost to you.