What tech vendors actually want from their clients

Over the years, I’ve seen that the most successful technology partnerships rarely start with technology. They start with a clear understanding that change is needed and a shared vision for where the organization wants to go. The hotel groups that get the greatest value from technology are usually those that are willing to challenge the status quo and bring the right people together to make informed decisions.

Equally important is leadership. Executive sponsorship cannot simply exist at the top of the organization, it needs to go throughout the business so that teams understand not just what is changing, but why. When leaders communicate openly about their vision and create alignment around common goals, the teams and partners succeed.

I also believe that momentum matters. Strategies are important, but so is putting them into action. When there is clarity of purpose, the right stakeholders are engaged, and everyone is working toward the same outcome, a vendor relationship can evolve into a genuine long-term partnership that drives meaningful results for everyone involved.

This resonates deeply after decades in hospitality technology. The strongest outcomes come from genuine partnerships—not merely contracts.

As a P&L owner, I’ve seen that distinction from both sides. Some clients generate meaningful revenue but create a disproportionate drain on resources or dominate a roadmap in ways that do not serve the broader customer community. Those relationships can put otherwise promising projects at risk, and vendors truly should consider whether the revenue justifies the chaos that a contract might be creating.

The clients a vendor will go the extra mile for have realistic expectations. They challenge their partners to improve, but they also understand that resources are finite and that a vendor has responsibilities to its entire customer base. They are clear, collaborative, patient with the process, and focused on shared outcomes rather than individual demands.

That kind of relationship builds trust, makes difficult conversations easier, and creates the conditions for both organizations to succeed. Those are the customers worth stretching for.

In my experience running a boutique technology firm, choosing the right client matters as much as the client choosing the right vendor. Our scarcest resource is not scale. It is attention.

The clients we go the extra mile for are clear about the problem they are solving, give us the real decision-makers, decide with discipline, and treat the relationship as a partnership rather than a transaction. They value expertise enough to hear hard answers.

When it works, they get far more than contractual delivery: founder access, senior people, faster decisions, deeper thinking, flexibility, and a level of commitment no vendor can manufacture at scale.

But partnership requires reciprocity: commercial fairness, openness, and recognition of the effort invested on both sides.

And discipline on ours. The 80/20 rule governs services: a few relationships create most of the value. A boutique survives by saying no to the rest and focusing disproportionately on the few.

The clients we go furthest for are never simply the biggest. They are where trust runs deep, work is strategic, and both sides grow. Vendors do not assign their best people by contract value. They ration them by where their best work is possible.

Let’s start with something surprisingly innovative: honesty. If a project is delayed internally, tell us. If resources are missing, say so. If priorities have changed, even better to know before the next steering committee.

We also appreciate partnership at eye level. Vendors are neither magicians nor an outsourced department for solving every internal challenge. Even the best technology cannot compensate indefinitely for unclear responsibilities, missing resources or decisions that nobody wants to make.

For strategic projects, a capable internal team and visible C-level support are essential. Transformation works much better when somebody on the hotel side actually owns it—and when “the vendor will handle it” is not the project strategy.

And yes, structure helps. Clear processes, realistic timelines, transparent communication and accountability make everyone’s life easier.

Fortunately, we have many clients who work exactly this way—and we love working with them. These partnerships show what is possible when both sides take responsibility and respect each other’s contribution.

In the end, hotels and vendors want exactly the same thing: a successful project.

The best results happen when we stop thinking in terms of customer versus supplier and start behaving like one team—with honesty, ownership and mutual respect.

The surest sign of a doomed partnership? An RFP with hundreds of feature requirements and nothing about what success looks like.

One reason large organizations wither is that managers won't challenge old, comfortable ways. They hide behind the safety of a massive, boilerplate spreadsheet rather than having hard conversations about actual business goals. I want a hotel group to break that habit and answer one question: what result are you buying?

Not "a CRM." Not "an AI strategy." Instead, a demand for more direct bookings from repeat guests. Less OTA dependence. Hours handed back to reservations teams. Something measurable, against a baseline you already know.

Outcome clarity fixes everything downstream. It tells everyone who belongs in the room: revenue, marketing, operations, not just IT. It speeds up decisions because every "nice to have" gets tested against the goal. It makes accountability mutual: we commit to the result; you commit the data access, the people, and an executive sponsor.

Hospitality technology is moving from passive software you manage to intelligent systems that deliver results on your behalf. Groups that are willing to challenge their old ways of buying get true partners. Groups that just buy features get shelfware - and a very expensive login screen.

For a vendor, firstly the most useful thing a hotel group can give us is honesty about where it really is. Are you exploring, building a business case, or ready to buy? All three are fine, but each needs different support from us. When early discovery gets presented as a live procurement, both sides waste time and goodwill.

Second, bring the right stakeholders in early. Guest-facing technology touches operations, IT, security, brand, revenue and property teams. If one function champions a project and another only finds out about it late, it usually stalls at contract. Worse, it can stall at rollout.

Third, be clear about the outcome you're buying: the guest or operational problem, and how you'll measure success. A feature list doesn't tell us that.

Finally, commit the resources to make it work. That means an owner who can make decisions, access to your integration partners, and a realistic timeline for deciding.

At Alliants, we'd rather hear "we're not ready yet" and help shape the thinking than chase a deal that was never going to happen. From my work with the AHLA T-100 vendor committee, the best partnerships I've seen started with that candour on both sides.

Fundamentally, vendors value top-down management commitment paired with clear project ownership. They value projects backed by active executive leadership and guided by a single, empowered internal person authorised to make decisions, enabling better collaboration.  Projects thrive with realistic timelines, defined budgets, and goals that clearly articulate expectations: a transparent "why" that clarifies goals at every step. A clearly defined future strategy is the foundation for successful projects, allowing vendors to better align solutions with long-term goals. 

Vendors also prefer clients who can accept that a modern system will do the same job differently than its predecessor. 

Software adoption relies on structured change management to ensure on-property teams embrace new digital workflows rather than resist them. Software fails when teams resist adoption. Vendors expect clients who actively manage change, ensuring front-desk agents, revenue managers, and housekeepers are all on board with digital transformations.  

When a property treats a technology implementation as a two-way strategic partnership, approaching system integrations, edge cases, and API limits as joint problem-solving exercises, the relationship transforms from transactional to a collaboration.  

Ultimately, what vendors expect are strong technology partnerships—ones built on shared ownership, adaptability, and a commitment to long-term success

In hospitality technology, securing an order and creating a successful client are two very different things. 

The best clients are not necessarily the largest or those that sign fastest. They're the ones with clear business objectives, internal ownership, and a genuine willingness to collaborate. 

A hotel may have the budget and executive backing, but if operational teams are not involved or aligned, nobody owns implementation, or employees are not supported through adoption, even the best technology can fall short.

As vendors we need to look beyond the buyer. We shouldn't just qualify the opportunity but understand why they are buying, what they're looking to achieve or solve, and whether the organisation is ready to make the operational changes required. If we don’t, we may win the contract but could be on the path toward unsuccessful deployment. 

At Hudini, this is an important part of our approach. We work with many of the world’s leading hospitality brands, and know that successful technology deployment requires collaboration. The strongest relationships are built when both parties recognise their shared responsibility for success. It’s not about more or bigger contracts, we want to work with clients who adopt, renew, expand and become advocates.

For me, the key things are:

·       Chemistry, ie can we work well together

·       Brand scope fit, ie is the vendor capability a good match for the client scope, and are the requirements clear? There is no point for a room-centric vendor to pitch for a resort hotel with golf and spa and lots of M&E.

·       Shared vision, ie is this a positive step and makes sense for both parties

·       Partnership, ie can both sides grow from this encounter and add compatible skills/capabilities. Is this one in a future collection of hotels? Does the client have a good USP?

The engagements that a vendor should apply due diligence to and perhaps avoid tend to be where the sponsor is an asset management or a private equity company. If there is a sniff of “they are just trying to bling up a hotel to make it look better for a sale”, but have deliberately been running it on empty for years with a defunct but cheap tech stack, then the vendor is likely to find many issues under the hood and a tired and frustrated set of staff, who won’t be up for the change management effort needed. Walk away.

A client earns that extra mile when they treat the vendor as a partner in outcomes rather than a supplier executing a scope document. In my experience, three things consistently separate those clients from the rest.

First, clarity of intent. Clients who articulate what success looks like for the end user, not just for the project timeline, give the vendor something worth investing in beyond the invoice.

Second, genuine engagement during implementation. A client who shows up, makes decisions promptly, and involves the operational team early signals that the relationship matters beyond the signature.

Third, and most important, a shared understanding that implementation is jointly owned. Success is not the vendor's deliverable handed to the client, nor the client's problem handed to the vendor; it is a partnership where both parties are accountable for the outcome, in service of the end user and the wider business. When that ownership is genuinely shared, the vendor stops managing a contract and starts managing a relationship.

Vendors, like clients, remember who showed up as a partner and who simply signed a contract. That distinction, more than budget or brand, tends to determine who gets the extra mile.

Working on the client side in terms of solving for hotel tech requirements and dealing with vendors to solve complex IT architecture issues, it's always great to understand the situation from the vendor's point of view.

The easy answer for what tech vendors want from their clients is in answering the question: what will boost ARR - annual recurring revenues - the most year-over-year to make financial backers happiest or to give the biggest growth projection for the biggest exit or to dominate one niche or another in the industry. It's all about growth.

So, evaluating growth and scale from an ARR / MRR perspective, tech vendors then must consider the who / what / why / where the next growth will occur, refining these debates into the ICP (ideal customer profile) and a G2M (go to market).

Now with ARR, ICP and G2M, we are better suited to see what would make a vendor go the extra mile... this would be a client that promises:

- High ARR with the potential for further ARR growth as the years progress

- Healthy margins on that revenue in terms of account management

- Client within ICP for hotel category, size, geography, tech use, integrations etc.

Treating a technology vendor as a collaborative partner rather than a simple utility provider encourages them to prioritise your hotel and provide their best resources. To earn this preferred status, hotels must demonstrate operational clarity, assign a dedicated product owner, maintain realistic expectations, provide constructive feedback, and show technological empathy.

Partnership and maturity.

Having been on all three sides of this environment, I have several decades of observation.

1. Trust - Long term relationships bring about additional effort and intent, because there is a mutual understanding of value. Even when times are difficult.

2. Intent - Finding a client that will embrace your technology and exploit it to the fullest possible level is the grail for technology providers. This demonstrates focus, foundational business capability, and supports innovation collaboratively.

3. Appreciation - Business is a two-way street. It is critical that a balanced understanding of the metrics of business is respected so that a relationship can grow successfully together.

4. Maturity - Perfect is an objective seldom met. Technology is organic by nature, and therefore there will be times of positive growth together, as well as times of collective struggle where status impacts the business progress of both parties. Maturity in the relationship is essential to maintain long term shared progress.

Adopt these among your broader business objectives and you will assemble a valuable body of business partners that can succeed together.

There must always be a big picture, and that should remain the shared focus.

For me, the strongest technology partnerships start with clarity. Before we talk about solutions, we need to understand the hotel group’s operational reality: where are the friction points today, and what are they trying to achieve?

That might be increasing F&B revenue, tackling staffing pressures, reducing manual administration and order errors, or finding better ways to engage guests and promote services across the entire property. More specific priorities could include multilingual capabilities, greater allergen transparency or creating a more convenient digital self-service experience.

Scale and structure matter too. How many properties and brands are involved? Are there regional variations? How much central control does the group want to retain, and what are its plans for future growth? A solution needs to work not just for today’s estate, but for where the business is heading.

We also need a clear picture of the existing technology infrastructure and F&B operation. Understanding current POS, PMS and payment systems, integration prerequisites and security protocols early on is essential, particularly if existing mobile ordering or digital guest directory technology is being replaced or enhanced.

Ultimately, we’re looking for openness, clear objectives and a willingness to collaborate. The best results come when both sides view the relationship not as a technology purchase, but as a long-term partnership focused on continually improving performance, operations and the guest experience.

Hotel groups expect a lot from their technology partners, and rightly so. But what is it that we need from them in return?
 
The first thing is data discipline. AI agents can only act on information that is structured and accessible. When room attributes, rates, policies and operating procedures are scattered across spreadsheets, PDFs and inboxes, nothing a vendor builds will compensate.
 
The second is a clear position on data access. Too many agreements, particularly in franchised models, leave operational and guest data under the control of another party. That is now as much an operational constraint as a legal one, because AI cannot work with data it can’t access.
 
The third is a willingness to test things. Adoption of our MCP server has grown quickly this year, across segments and verticals, and much of it has come from teams with no developers at all. What they had was a manager prepared to try a new workflow and change it the following week.

And finally, there should clearly be a partnership approach between the hotel groups and the technology companies. Great successes can be achieved if the parties work closely together as good partners.
 
Very little of this requires a large technology budget. It asks operators to treat their own data as infrastructure, and to do that work before the AI arrives rather than after.