The Great Debate — All-in-One vs Best-of-Breed: What Should Hotel Tech Vendors Focus On?

All-in-one, hands down. Advantages are:

• Fewer vendors to talk to, saving time
• Fewer dashboards to look at, preventing dashboard fatigue
• Fewer interfaces to maintain
• Better data streaming (not guaranteed though)
• Steamlined billing

There are exceptions to this, especially for emerging categories, but in a world of "satisficing", keeping it simple rules the day.

A very topical question which also came up at the HFTP Barcelona CIO Summit recently. There was no single answer as it will always depend on the particular situation. For a small hotel/BnB, a combo PMS/POS/IBE product like Avon Data, Heart or BookAssist may suffice and would do a very good job. For larger properties that major on Spa, M&E as well as room and restaurants, the picture is harder. I keep a matrix of which supplier (PMS, POS, Spa, IBE, RMS, M&E, CRM etc) links to which other supplier, and it changes weekly. Also, not all "open APIs" are the same. When you dig deeper, many are 1-way, 1.5 way, 2 way but with restrictions. Platforms seem to be the new black, and the big players like Access Group, Oracle, Shiji, and Agilysys are buying out the innovative, niche startups. This sometimes works provided that the platform isn't just a brand veneer over the original disparate systems. Add geography and the picture is even more complex. In Soho House we had 45 sites across 5 continents. Also add fiscalisation. Boom - you end up with 1-2 choices, unless you are willing to compromise.

In a word, yes.

All the major players in industry are working towards a hospitality 'platform' solution. Yes, you may be able to purchase the pieces separately, which is purely commercial. But they are designed and intended to support across business operations. Pick a software name, that is where they are headed and they are also using the language.

Why? Because all the industry challenges point to this type of a solution. Staffing, increasing revenue through sales of all inventory, cohesive staff experience, cohesive guest experience, simplicity and removal of layers of tech along with cost, single set of business information, true real time pricing and demand management. The list goes on.

It's not for everyone based upon the physical makeup of the property and business itself. The simple rule of thumb is that if you have anything meaningful to sell to a customer beyond a room, then you will need a platform to offer that, as well as the capability to place the product on the digital shelf.

Or you can keep doing it manually. Or not at all.

This is how the guest has always seen our industry. It's about time we looked at things that way too.

Why Best-of-Breed is the Future

The best guest experiences aren't built on compromise—and neither should your tech stack be. While all-in-one hotel software systems promise simplicity, they often underdeliver on depth, innovation, and flexibility. In contrast, a best-of-breed strategy empowers hoteliers to select top solutions for each function — PMS, CRM, RMS, IBE, ... — and connect them in real time.

The game-changer? A Central Guest Profile (CGP). When data from all sources is unified, and continuously updated in a CDP/CDM, hotels gain a 360° view of every guest. This single source of truth enables personalized service, intelligent automation, and superior guest experiences across the journey.

All-in-one systems struggle to keep pace with best-in-class tools and often lock hotels into rigid workflows or outdated features. They risk becoming data silos instead of enablers.

Ask yourself this: Would you really drive a car where 100%—engine, tires, electronics, even the seats—comes from one manufacturer? Of course not. You want the best of each.

Best-of-breed isn't complexity—it's strategic precision. With real-time integration and a CGP at the center, your IT stack becomes an ecosystem that adapts, evolves, and performs.

In hospitality tech, flexibility and specialization are not luxuries. They're survival.

The Swiss army knife Vs scalpel analogy is an excellent one. A SAK is capable of lots of things well enough for 80% of people 80% of the time. It may not be a case of "either one or the other", you may want both a SAK for most things most of the time and also a scalpel for the one thing your brand need to be doing with absolute precision. In our luxury space, our toolbox contains multiple scalpels. The challenge of managing multiple scalpels and getting them to talk together and provide consistent and consolidated output is a price we are willing to pay for the difference between "80% of people, 80% of the time" and precision. Having said that, the less critical functions where there are several targets that are similar, of course we have at least one SAK! When you need to hit a target and not necessarily smash it, who wouldn't?!

Like everything in life, there's no one-size-fits-all.

For small or independent properties, best-of-breed gives speed, flexibility, and access to laser-focused tools that do one thing exceptionally well. That kind of modularity is a feature, not a bug. You can experiment, pivot, and replace components without rewriting your entire operational DNA.

But once you start scaling (think 100+ rooms, multiple outlets, spas, golf courses, or multi-property groups), the cracks begin to show. Fourteen tools mean fourteen logins, contracts, support teams, and invoices, and a minor update in one app can break workflows across the board. And suddenly, your team is spending more time babysitting the tech stack than actually running a hotel. 

This is where all-in-one platforms start to make sense. Not because they're flawless, but because they offer operational cohesion. For complex, multi-department hotels, that consistency matters. It reduces friction, accelerates onboarding, and lets leadership focus on guests and growth instead of playing systems integrator.

And the irony? Many best-of-breed vendors are now morphing into quasi-all-in-one suites—adding POS, CRM, RMS, you name it. Meanwhile, the all-in-ones are scrambling to open their APIs and act more modular.

This isn't a battle of approaches. It's a convergence in slow motion.

From a technology perspective, the hospitality industry will continue to have a PMS-centric hotel tech stack approach. The question is, what kind of a PMS? Luckily for our industry, the future is already here in the form of a cloud with Open API (application programming interface) integration platform. Ever since the emergence of the cloud-first PMS platforms Mews and Cloudbeds, and of Opera Cloud five years ago, there has been a monumental shift in the PMS vendor community's mindset: from closed system mentality to cloud PMS with Open API mentality.

Iin the near and mid-term, any full-service 3-4-5-star hotel will need over 100 plus APIs with third-party tech applications and solutions to be able to function and meet the basic needs and wants of today's digitally-savvy travelers.These include AI Agents, guest experience, issue resolution apps, guest messaging, virtual concierge, IoT, smart room technology, CRM programs, etc.

So, the question is: should hospitality tech vendors aim to become a one-stop-shop or a best-of-breed plug-in? The above already provides the answer: unless you are a cloud PMS, your hospitality tech company should aim to become the  best-of-breed plug-in vendor in your category: Agentic AI platform, PMS, CRS, CRM, Channel Manager, etc. 

The "all-in-one vs. best-of-breed" debate in hotel tech is far more than a theoretical exercise—it's a daily operational challenge with real consequences. The issue isn't with best-of-breed solutions themselves, but with the lack of true collaboration among vendors. The outdated notion that specialised systems create chaos is simply untrue; what really causes friction is siloed thinking, restrictive APIs, and business models that protect turf rather than enable value.

Best-of-breed thrives when vendors act as genuine partners—prioritising open integrations, seamless data sharing, and a shared focus on client outcomes. I've seen purpose-built platforms outperform generic, all-in-one solutions—provided there's an ecosystem mentality. Hoteliers don't want fewer systems; they want less friction and more interoperability, so their tech stack works as a cohesive whole.

For vendors, the strategic question isn't about becoming everything to everyone, but about being essential in what you do best and collaborating with others who complement your strengths. The future belongs to those who champion openness and execution over ambition and lock-in. True industry progress will come from building ecosystems that empower every player to excel, ultimately benefiting the operator, the guest, and the bottom line.

This debate boils down to convenience versus capability. All-in-one systems promise simplicity, but not without trade-offs including limited flexibility, slow innovation and diluted functionality.

More importantly, the all-in-one model is becoming obsolete as the industry shifts from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Results as a Service (RaaS), making software value measurable by business outcomes, not user subscriptions.

AI agents are accelerating this shift. Now, instead of buying CRM software, hoteliers can deploy an agent that recognises returning guests, triggers personalised offers and drives upsells. Agents deliver a high ROI because they can be tasked with specific, measurable outcomes.

The agent-first era fundamentally changes the way we think about tech strategy. In this architecture, you no longer need to map out which tools to connect. You simply set a goal, such as–"handle guest FAQs" or "manage overbookings"–and the agent executes the steps to achieve it. This reflects the core shift from SaaS to RaaS. Value is delivered through outcomes.

Businesses will only demand more AI agents. But agents need open environments, a capability inherent within the open best-of-breed model, not closed all-in-one systems.

"Best-of-breed" isn't just a better strategy. It's inevitable as businesses increasingly expect performance not promises.

Best-of-breed systems were built in a different era, where software technology was expensive and time-consuming to implement. Now, times have changed, and today's new-generation vendors are developing tech stacks that function as all-in-one solutions. There is no doubt about the right strategy moving forward: it is all-in-one. 

With a centralised platform, these solutions offer several key advantages, including a unified data layer and a single source of truth for guest data across multiple revenue touch points. An added benefit is eliminating the need for interfaces between multiple modules, such as reservations, PMS, POS, spa management, inventory, catering, and finance. This results in reduced maintenance, as there are fewer breakpoints to manage. 

That said, hotels still require additional solutions such as web booking engines, RMS, Wi-Fi systems, and door lock systems. These, however, can be seamlessly integrated into platforms without compromising data integrity. 

A well-structured data layer, with clean, categorised data, lays the foundation for advanced tools like artificial intelligence, business intelligence, and whatever comes next in hospitality tech innovation. So, my answer remains: the future of hospitality will be all-in-one platforms. 

As hotels become more tech-savvy and their operations more complex, the choice between an All-in-One platform and a Best-in-Class tech stack is becoming harder to ignore. All-in-One systems promise simplicity—one vendor, one login, one support line—but that convenience comes at the cost of innovation and flexibility. When a provider tries to cover everything from PMS to CRM to RMS, they stretch themselves thin, leading to slower development and shallow functionality that limits you to a single operational workflow: i.e., a hotel needs to operate how the software works, not the software supporting a hotel’s business needs. That can leave hotels stuck with tools that don’t fully support their day-to-day needs—or worse, with no real influence over where the product goes next. For something as mission-critical as a PMS, that’s a major risk to any complex hotel operation.

Hotel operations are complex, and a one-size-fits-all workflow just won’t cut it. That’s why it’s essential to partner with a provider dedicated to developing its core PMS functionality. A Best-in-Class PMS vendor takes a thoughtful, purpose-driven approach to development by listening to customers in order to build robust features, expanding capabilities, and continuously driving innovation where it matters most.

This commitment often leads to stronger partnerships, where hotels receive not only responsive support but also a meaningful voice in the product roadmap. Rather than being just another account number, hotels collaborate with a vendor who’s genuinely invested in their long-term success—someone who listens, adapts, and delivers enhancements that make a real difference.

As unified platforms gain traction—delivering integrated solutions under one provider, contract, and user interface—many hoteliers are asking: can a single vendor truly cover it all, or is a best-of-breed approach still superior?

Best-of-breed systems excel in specialization and flexibility, enabling hotels to tailor solutions to their unique needs. Yet, they often come with integration hurdles, higher costs, data silos, and increased complexity in managing multiple vendors and compliance requirements.

Unified platforms, by contrast, streamline operations. With one accountable partner, support becomes more efficient, and a unified roadmap ensures every component—whether PMS, CRS, CRM, or S&C—evolves in sync. This reduces friction, accelerates deployment, and promotes departmental alignment. However, unified platforms can sometimes lack the deep functionality required by more specialized or complex operations.

The most promising future lies in composable unified platforms—a hybrid model. These platforms offer the efficiency and cohesion of unification while allowing hotels to plug in best-in-class solutions where needed. Composability provides the adaptability to evolve, scale, and innovate—enabling hoteliers to build a tailored ecosystem that works seamlessly together. It’s not about choosing one or the other, but bringing the best of both worlds into harmony.

Maximizing efficiency and insights through centralized technology is rapidly becoming the new standard. As more software vendors and their customers prioritize the security of cloud infrastructure, the need for consolidation has prompted many software companies to consolidate services to drive efficiency and increase profitability. However, hoteliers and technology specialists must collaborate closely when seeking to leverage unified data streams in today’s complex ecosystems.

While it seems elementary, one of the keys to success is to unify disparate data streams. Partnering with a single, full-scale vendor transforms the way businesses manage their data and operations. By centralizing guest profiles, pricing engines, and distribution channels into a single, cohesive hub, organizations can eliminate blind spots and data silos, thereby paving the way for seamless connectivity. This integration not only enhances operational clarity but also ensures that every data point is accessible, actionable, and synchronized in real-time.

Open APIs are the backbone of modern, flexible technology ecosystems. These interfaces enable businesses to customize their systems without requiring extensive integrations, new development, or reliance on additional third-party solutions. While certain specialized tools may still be necessary to meet specific requirements, open APIs ensure that the foundational tech stack remains stable and consistent. This approach strikes a balance between customization and operational efficiency, allowing businesses to adapt to an ever-evolving technological landscape.

Working with a single partner who owns the end-to-end technology stack dramatically accelerates time-to-value. Faster deployments become the norm, as does consistent maintenance, which reduces downtime and ensures reliable performance. Moreover, having a single unified support line eliminates the complexity of managing multiple vendors, invoices, and login credentials, thereby simplifying operations and improving responsiveness. This approach streamlines workflows and reduces operational friction, allowing businesses to focus on strategic growth rather than administrative burdens.

A centralized technology ecosystem not only consolidates data but also unlocks the potential for unified reporting and analytics. For instance, a comprehensive view enables smarter revenue strategies by identifying trends, forecasting demand, and optimizing pricing. Delivering personalized guest experiences becomes easier as businesses can utilize detailed profiles and preferences. Additionally, real-time insights empower businesses to implement proactive operations, addressing issues before they escalate and ensuring seamless service delivery.

By unifying data streams, leveraging open APIs, accelerating implementation, and unlocking real-time insights, businesses can position themselves as agile, data-driven leaders in their industries. Centralized technology is no longer a luxury but a necessity in our increasingly interconnected world, enabling organizations to achieve both operational excellence and exceptional customer experiences.