Choosing between all-in-one platforms and best-of-breed tools? This comprehensive guide breaks down the real costs, hidden pain points, and practical framework to help you make the right software decision for your travel agency.
Choosing the right software stack for your travel agency is one of the most consequential decisions you'll make. Get it right, and you'll have a streamlined operation that scales effortlessly. Get it wrong, and you'll spend years wrestling with disconnected systems, data silos, and integration headaches. This guide breaks down the two dominant approaches—all-in-one platforms versus best-of-breed solutions—so you can make an informed choice.
Every travel agency reaches a crossroads. You've outgrown spreadsheets, your inbox is overflowing, and you're losing track of enquiries. You need proper software—but which approach is right for your business?
Best-of-breed means selecting the absolute best tool for each specific function: the best CRM, the best accounting package, the best email marketing platform, the best booking system. Each tool excels at its specialty.
All-in-one means choosing a single platform that handles everything—CRM, quotes, bookings, payments, customer portal, marketing, and analytics—in one integrated system.
Both approaches have passionate advocates. Let's examine the reality of each.
On paper, best-of-breed looks attractive. You're getting the "best" tool for each job. But the true cost goes far beyond subscription fees.
A typical best-of-breed stack for a small travel agency (5 users) might include:
Total: £425-1,155/month (£5,100-13,860/year)
The subscription fees are just the beginning. Here's what really catches agencies off guard:
We've spoken to hundreds of travel agency owners. These are the pain points that come up repeatedly with best-of-breed setups:
"I have customer information in five different places," one agency owner told us. "Their preferences are in the CRM, booking history in the booking system, payment history in accounting, email interactions in the marketing tool, and support tickets in Zendesk. When they call, I'm clicking between tabs trying to get the full picture."
This isn't an edge case—it's the norm. Without a single source of truth, personalisation becomes impossible and customer service suffers.
Here's a mathematical reality that surprises most people: the number of potential integrations grows exponentially with each new tool.
Each integration is a potential point of failure. Each one needs monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting when things go wrong. And things always go wrong eventually.
Want to know your true customer lifetime value? Your most profitable travel types? Which marketing channels actually convert? Good luck pulling that data from 8 different systems.
Agencies with best-of-breed stacks often end up exporting CSVs from multiple systems, merging them in Excel, and hoping the data matches up. It's time-consuming, error-prone, and means decisions are made on incomplete information.
All-in-one platforms flip the script entirely. Instead of wrestling with integration complexity, everything lives in one place—designed to work together from day one.
When a customer calls, you see everything: their enquiry history, past bookings, payment status, email interactions, and any support tickets. No tab-switching, no data hunting. Just instant context that lets you provide exceptional service.
Because everything is built on the same platform, data flows automatically. Create a quote, and it links to the customer. Convert it to a booking, and your finance module updates. Send a confirmation email, and it's logged against the booking. No Zapier. No API troubleshooting. No broken syncs.
With all your data in one place, reporting becomes genuinely powerful. See your end-to-end conversion funnel, track customer lifetime value, identify your most profitable products, and understand which marketing actually works—all from a single dashboard.
New team members learn one system, not eight. The interface is consistent, the logic is coherent, and muscle memory develops faster. Most agencies report their team is fully productive within days rather than weeks.
The productivity difference is dramatic. With an all-in-one platform:
The Numbers: Agencies switching from best-of-breed to all-in-one report saving 10-20 hours per week on administrative tasks. That's time that can go directly into serving customers and growing the business.
To be fair, there are scenarios where best-of-breed remains the better choice:
For most travel agencies—especially those under 50 staff—the all-in-one approach delivers dramatically better value.
Ask yourself these questions:
If you don't have a dedicated IT person or team, best-of-breed will become a constant headache. Integration issues don't fix themselves.
Don't just compare subscription costs. Factor in integration tools, setup time, training across multiple systems, and ongoing maintenance. The all-in-one that seems more expensive per month often costs far less annually.
Best-of-breed takes months to set up properly. All-in-one platforms can have you operational in days. If you need to move fast, the choice is clear.
Adding new team members to a best-of-breed stack means adding seats across 8+ tools and training them on each. All-in-one scales more gracefully.
If you want to make decisions based on real business intelligence, unified data is essential. Best-of-breed makes comprehensive reporting extremely difficult.
The software landscape has evolved. A decade ago, best-of-breed was often the only way to get professional-grade tools. Today, all-in-one platforms have matured dramatically—offering the functionality, reliability, and flexibility that travel agencies need.
For most travel agencies, the maths is clear:
The best-of-breed era made sense when specialisation was the only path to quality. But in 2025, all-in-one platforms deliver specialist-level functionality across every module—with the massive added benefit of everything working together seamlessly.
The question isn't whether you can afford an all-in-one platform. It's whether you can afford the hidden costs of not having one.
SimpTrav replaces 9+ separate tools with one unified platform. CRM, quotes, bookings, payments, customer portal, analytics—everything travel agencies need, working together seamlessly.
See how SimpTrav can save you 52-68% compared to piecing together multiple tools.
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