The Access Group, one of the largest UK headquartered business management software providers, today announced that it has agreed to acquire Talent Funnel, subject to completion.
Talent Funnel is an applicant tracking system purpose built for the UK hospitality sector, serving more than 100 customers, including The Ivy Collection, GAIL's Bakery, Itsu, Compass Group and Nightcap. The platform is used across more than 2,193 hospitality sites and supports approximately 3 million applications and the recruitment of 75,000 employees each year.
Founded in 2016, Talent Funnel helps hospitality operators attract, hire and onboard people more efficiently through branded careers sites, candidate management and automated onboarding workflows. The platform includes AI capabilities designed specifically for hospitality recruitment, helping operators manage high volume hiring, candidate screening, shift flexibility requirements and compliance processes. Since 2022, Talent Funnel has grown its customer base by 435%, reflecting increasing demand for specialist recruitment technology in the hospitality sector.
The acquisition comes at a time when hospitality operators continue to face significant recruitment challenges, including high employee turnover, seasonal peaks in demand and ongoing pressure to fill roles quickly while maintaining candidate quality and compliance. Recruitment technology is playing an increasingly important role in helping operators attract and retain talent.
Talent Funnel will join Access Hospitality and become part of Access Evo, The Access Group's AI-enabled platform. Access Evo is designed to be interoperable, enabling organisations to work seamlessly across products, workflows and data rather than simply connecting separate systems.
By bringing together software, data and AI across the employee lifecycle, Access Evo helps businesses recruit, onboard, manage, develop and pay their people more effectively. AI is embedded throughout the platform, helping automate processes, surface insights and support better decision making. This interoperable approach also helps organisations reduce the "toggle tax" associated with switching between multiple systems, giving teams more time to focus on productive work.
The acquisition adds a dedicated hospitality ATS capability to Access Hospitality's existing people management portfolio, which includes Rotaready Evo for workforce management and HR, CPL Learning Evo for learning and development, and Paycircle Evo for payroll. Together within Access Evo, these solutions provide an interoperable people management platform that allows customer data, workflows and AI driven insights to flow across the employee lifecycle, from recruitment through to retention.
Martin Verdon-Roe, Chief Commercial Officer, Access Hospitality F&B, said:
"Talent Funnel is the right acquisition because it has been built specifically for the way hospitality businesses recruit. The team has created a solution that meets the demands of high volume, multi-site hiring while delivering a great experience for both employers and candidates.
"The growth the business has achieved in recent years demonstrates both the quality of the team and the demand for technology that addresses hospitality's unique recruitment challenges. We share a common vision for using technology and AI to solve real operational challenges. Bringing Talent Funnel into Access Hospitality strengthens our ability to support the entire employee journey, from attracting and onboarding talent through to workforce management, learning and payroll. As part of Access Evo, customers will benefit from an interoperable platform where data, workflows and AI work together, reducing complexity and helping teams spend less time switching between systems and more time focusing on their people and guests."
Chris Eccles and Andre Boeke, Co CEOs of Talent Funnel, said:
"Joining Access gives Talent Funnel the resources to develop our product further and faster than we could as a standalone business. We are passionate about what we have built for the hospitality sector and excited about what becoming part of Access will enable for our product, our people and our customers.
"Access shares our focus on innovation, customer success and practical applications of AI. Both of us are staying with the business and we are looking forward to the next chapter."
The acquisition is expected to complete in August 2026.
