Chief Operations Officer Holiday Extras Holdings Limited and Holiday Extras Limited
Elisabeth Hirlemann has enjoyed a varied ‘career’.
A love of languages and travel, combined with parenthood, led to a late developed passion for accountancy.
She lived and worked in Germany and France before her marriage took her to El Salvador in Central America, where her two sons spent their early years.
Elisabeth started a career in teaching and then set up a business offering European tour programmes for young people. The experience of costing and organising these tours gave her the inspiration to train as an accountant.
Elisabeth has a first class honours degree in German and IT. With more ‘life experience’ than the average trainee Chartered Accountant, Elisabeth brought ‘added value’ to her clients. During nine years in practice she enjoyed both advising and learning about what makes businesses successful, from manufacturing to the travel industry.
The opening up of East Germany gave Elisabeth the opportunity to advise in a number of new business set-ups.
When her sons reached a more independent age, Elisabeth capitalised on her fluency in four languages and an accounting qualification by joining an international car rental company as European Audit Manager where she gained an insight into business from the inside.
In 1997 Elisabeth was asked to join the Holiday Extras Board as finance director and after the management buy-out in February 2005 became the chief operations officer of Holiday Extras and now has responsibility for People Team as well as IT.
Elisabeth’s weekends are busy with her young grandsons, travelling or landscaping a recently acquired 5 acre "hobby" farm.
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