Elodie Leunen (IMHI 03) is the Deputy CEO and Founder of Fastpayhotels, based in Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

AAIMHI : What do you remember from your time at IMHI?

Elodie: It was a very busy time of my life. I learned professionally as much as personally. It was not only about the Master. Our promotion was amazing, full of talented different people. Many years after, we are still all very much in touch when we can. It’s the reflection of how much we were impacted by our 2 years spent in Paris. IMHI was great to start our careers but the friendships we have made there will last a lifetime.

AAIMHI: Can you share a bit about your career and your company?

Elodie : Back in 2003, the industry was still very much impacted by September 11^th, so I decided to leave Paris, learn another language and travel. I started to work for big corporations for few years to gain work experience, see what was best in class. Then I challenged all that to work for a smaller company where I learned to be an entrepreneur. 7 years ago, I started my own business FastpayHotels, where I keep learning every day. 

FastpayHotels is a company that distributes hotel inventory to travel agencies. We literally take the hotel inventory from our core clients, like Choice Hotels, Wyndham, from smaller to larger hotel chains, and distribute it to travel agencies all over the world. 

This inventory is then distributed through APIs to travel agencies, OTAs, Operators, retail agencies. Since the beginning we made sure that this distribution was very much automated. I was not an IT person but had to become one. 

Four years ago, just before Covid, we managed to obtain a large investment of 10 million from a VC in London. We started optimizing the system to be even more efficient and we are now moving from the traditional intermediary to a hotel IT platform. We did well in connecting and distributing and are currently looking to expand in niche markets. We are providing IT solutions to hotels to control better their distribution. 

It is a challenge to start your own firm and you definitively need a specific mindset. 

During my time in IMHI, I worked through the apprenticeship in hotel operations. I loved that experience, work is different every day, you learn a lot, meet different people and you never get bored. 

I then moved to this large corporate company Amadeus, which was a completely different working environment. You start at 9am, you finish at 6pm, that is definitively not a stressful job. I was in my 30s, in Madrid, had no kids, no mortgage to pay, with a solid job and I learned a lot. I stayed with Amadeus 7 years and decided to change to Expedia, which was a reference in the field also.

After two years with Expedia, I was recruited to work for an UK company in hotel distribution and who were looking for someone based in Mallorca. Of course, it was a risk, working in a new country, for a smaller company, but I was young with no kids, so I took the challenge. The CEO of that firm was a real entrepreneur, and he managed his company as if everyone had to be one. It was great to be creative, to work on your own projects, my way.

Four years later I decided to create Fastpayhotels, even if it was a crazy timing. I had a two-year-old, my husband was not working in Mallorca but in Madrid, I had my house to refurbish….

Since then, I have wanted to quit 1000 times, but I really enjoyed the flexibility of my work, being my own boss. It is very addictive to be entrepreneurial, but I know it scares a lot of people when they start. But an IMHI graduate is probably more prepared to entrepreneurship than most people as we receive a solid base of knowledge. We have the support of a great network. 

AAIMHI: Would you say that IMHI had an impact to your career? Was it an accelerator?

Elodie : IMHI was key to entry many companies and is still today a great asset in my career. You can open many locked doors by contacting ex-alumni. However, it’s the skills acquired during my Master that have helped me tremendously when I had to set Fastpayhotels, from HR to investors meetings, IMHI has provided me with the right set of skills to do my job today, even 20 years after.

AAIMHI: Could you share an achievement you are particularly proud of?

Elodie: Balancing my job with my private life is the greatest achievement of all. Creating Fastpayhotels, my own company, has allowed me to live tremendous new experiences and get a job that I love, but mostly, it has given me a quality of life that I enjoy every day. 

Being an entrepreneur, a young woman, in hospitality, is definitively difficult, we live in a very specific world. In my business I am still surrounded today by older men, most of the times I am the only woman. Women have a different approach towards management in general.

At Fastpayhotels, we are about 85% women, we have flexible working hours, flexible number of holidays, I work with very loyal people and have basically no turnover.

As I woman, I recommend to others to never think that because you are a woman you have less to say. Some women will not raise their voices because we don’t like conflict, afraid to be regarded as aggressive. I remember one of my board members asking me why I had only one child, that it was very selfish of me, just brutally deciding for me where I have to stand. These comments are still very typical in our industry, and I can only stress that we should never lower our voice or feel afraid because we are women.

AAIMHI: Are there any lessons you have learned in your career that you would like to share with the younger graduates?

Elodie : It is way easier to be mistaken when your young and have no family, children, and mortgage. Experiment as much as possible. Learn from experiences rather than books. And don’t focus too much on earning money, get something you really like, the rest will follow.

AAIMHI: Besides the academic degree, which are the soft skills you believe are particularly important today?

Elodie : Empathy is crucial. No other business is the same, no employee is the same. We are all defined by what we have lived and learned. Empathy will help you to open new horizons, get better deals and establish long term professional relationships.

AAIMHI: Do you believe the alumni association AAIMHI, the IMHI network, is important?

Elodie: The IMHI network is very important, any initiative to create a proper network is welcomed. In any step of your career, good or bad, to be able to count on this network is an amazing asset.

Thank you Elodie!