The open vs closed ecosystem debate facing every hotelier

In the red corner, a hotel tech stack built from the best individual tools available. In the blue corner, a single, connected operating system courtesy of one vendor. Who are you supporting? 

It's a question that touches everything from contract negotiations to cybersecurity – and one that Matt Welle, CEO of Mews, recently dedicated a full episode of Matt Talks Hospitality to answering. Here are the key considerations. 

The case for openness 

Thirteen years ago, Mews became the first hospitality company to publish its API directly on its website, inviting the industry to build integrations freely. The reasoning was straightforward: focus funding on building the best PMS and let partners solve adjacent problems. 

It worked. Mews now connects with over 1,000 integration partners, and that breadth has driven its growth across markets and property types. A luxury spa hotel, a hostel with dorm beds, a hybrid co-working space – each has different operational needs that no single vendor could anticipate. Open APIs let specialist partners fill those gaps. 

For a smaller hotel running seven or eight integrations, the model is manageable. But the economics shift as properties scale. A hotel with 100 to 1,000 rooms might run 15 to 30 integrations. At that point, flexibility carries a real cost. 

"There's a real integration tax," Matt explains. "You have to navigate multiple vendors, multiple contracts, their support handoff. So when something goes wrong, you have to figure out which system was wrong and navigate a three-way conversation." 

Data flows across systems with different security standards. Workflows can become brittle. And extending a capability requires aligning two separate roadmaps instead of one. 

The roadmap problem 

Several years ago, Mews launched flexible space types, letting properties sell anything from coworking desks by the hour to bicycle rentals and monthly apartment stays. But the marketplace didn’t follow. Revenue management vendors saw it as a niche edge case, and booking engines hadn't considered flexible time units. 

"We updated our API, and then we found that none of the revenue management systems were building towards that use case," Matt explains. 

The solution was to bring a category leader in-house. Mews acquired Atomize – now fully integrated as Mews RMS – to own the revenue management roadmap and move it in lockstep with the rest of the product. Flexkeeping, the operations and housekeeping tool, followed the same path into the operating system. 

In other words, when the open marketplace reaches its limits, Mews builds inward. 

Data as the long game 

The deeper argument for consolidation is about data. When PMS, POS, payments and revenue management share a single data layer, there’s a fundamental shift in what’s possible. 

What does that look like?  

A Business Intelligence tool tracks every transaction across the property, mapped to individual guest profiles. Embedded payments across the operating system automate every charge during a stay from the moment of booking. When a guest complaint lands in a review platform, it updates the guest profile in the PMS and triggers a maintenance task simultaneously. Kiosks only upsell early check-ins when the room is automatically confirmed as clean. 

None of these flows work cleanly when data lives in separate systems. They require a connected architecture that only a consolidated operating system provides. 

"You want to have a castle with a moat around," Matt says. "And the way to protect yourself from disruption by AI is leaning into AI. What it wants is proprietary data – data that is unique to your hotel business." 

The red corner and the blue corner 

Large hotel groups will continue to want Mews Marketplace's breadth and flexibility. Mews is committed to keeping those APIs open for partners willing to build towards them. 

For smaller independent properties, the math is different. They typically want simplicity, security and a single relationship. The consolidated operating system serves them better. 

The integration tax is real. So are roadmap problems and the data advantage of a connected system. The question for hoteliers is which of those weighs heaviest at your property – and where you stand to achieve the biggest gains. Which corner are you in? 

This article is based on a recent episode of Matt Talks Hospitality. For more insights, watch the full episode. 

Watch the episode