Anniversary Spotlight: Leander Eyer’s Reflection on 15 Years at HotelPartner

Leander Eyer is the longest-serving employee at HotelPartner and acts as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), overseeing the entire IT and development department. He can now look back on 15 years with us and shares some personal stories and private insights from this time in our anniversary interview.

15 years at HotelPartner – that’s a long time, during which you even witnessed the beginnings of what HotelPartner is today. Please give us a brief overview of this time.
My journey began in 2006 when I, as a student, developed the first tools for Oliver Meyer, the founder of HotelPartner. Back then, he was just taking his first steps in the hotel industry, and there wasn’t yet a proper company. Over time, the business idea for HotelPartner with Revenue Management as a service emerged, and when Oliver wanted to establish the GmbH in 2008, I was immediately on board. We were a typical startup, working with full dedication late into the night. Gradually, our small team, as well as my IT department, grew. At the very beginning, I developed and assembled the foundation for today’s HotelPartner Performance Platform on my own, but now I receive tremendous support from my team. Today, my main focus lies on system architecture, team management, and finding ways to collaborate even more effectively and exchange knowledge.

The story of HotelPartner feels like the coming of age of a teenager to me: At first, everything is new and wild, testing boundaries to see what works. Over time, the company begins to professionalize – to grow up. It’s a lengthy process, but we’re on the right path. I was fortunate enough to grow alongside the company: from the student who programmed in his room late into the night to a family man and team leader. I would like to thank Rainer Willa, René Landtwing, and Florian Augustin for the energy, knowledge, and experience they invested in transforming the company into a professional entity!

What an exciting journey! What was your biggest success that you’re proud of, and what was a challenge that helped you grow?
With the strong growth and success of HotelPartner, the demands on IT have also evolved. I am proud that under my leadership, we built our system in such a way that it could grow alongside the company over these 15 years. A challenge for me was bringing together my group of programmers, each working on their own projects, into a cohesive team. Leading and organizing a team is a completely different world and requires different skills than what is typically done in IT. Therefore, it’s very important for me to lead the team effectively, and I’ve attended many training sessions to improve my leadership qualities.

Thank you for sharing this challenge with us. How do you see your own future at HotelPartner, and what do you wish for this future?
In the future, I won’t be writing code myself anymore. Instead, I’ll be focusing on system architecture and leading my amazing team. Additionally, I’ll be driving the implementation of many of our projects and ideas in the IT field. I find the potential of AI support particularly exciting: as programmers, we tell the computer how to solve a problem through algorithms. With neural networks, on the other hand, we show the computer a solution to a problem millions of times, and the computer derives the solution itself – that’s a true art for me. With AI, we’ll be able to relieve our employees of a lot of repetitive work in the future, for example, by having the AI find specific anomalies. So, big changes are coming our way. Therefore, I hope that HotelPartner has no fear of the future, because it will be fantastic, and we will grow together to meet the challenges – a little more every day.

A beautiful, optimistic outlook on the future. What advice would you give to a new colleague on their first day at HotelPartner with this mindset?
Here, too, I would call for calmness, with a piece of advice that is also a fundamental principle of software design: “Never borrow sorrow.” Solve problems when they arise, and don’t dwell on what could go wrong. Because most of the time, things turn out better than you think.

A great piece of advice! If you had a song that played every time you entered the office, what would it be? Does it reflect your calmness?
Quite simply, I would choose Beethoven’s Fifth. And no, it doesn’t stand for calmness, but for drama. I love classical music.

Wow – truly a dramatic intro! Even after 15 years, your team probably doesn’t know everything about you. What is a characteristic of yours that few people know about?
Something that not everyone knows is that I enjoy watching animated films, especially Japanese anime like One Piece. By now, I also have a good excuse for it, because my kids enjoy them just as much as I do, if not more.

In conclusion, a question specifically for your service anniversary celebration: If this were a holiday, how would it be celebrated?
I think a barbecue party on a beautiful large meadow by a lake would be fantastic for celebrating the day. Everyone would bring their families, and the entire HotelPartner family would grill together outdoors in the sun.

What a lovely idea for a celebration! Thank you, Leander, for sharing your story with us, and all the best for the next 15 years at HotelPartner!