Do you often find yourself dreaming about how you could improve your hotel’s operations if you just had a few more hours in the day?
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As former hoteliers, Mews founders Matt and Richard have been where you are. They’ve been in the trenches and seen how manual tasks take time away from what really matters in hospitality: creating remarkable experiences for your guests.
That’s why automation is one of our (many) specialties here at Mews. Our time-saving technology is designed to transform frantic front desks into Zen gardens of guest satisfaction and busy back offices into models of operational efficiency. But does it work? Our customers seem to think so.
In this article, we share six examples of how Mews automations saved our customers significant time across their operations. From slashing check-in time to generating reports in just one click, you’re about to see what it’s like to get hours of your day back.
Case 1: Ready-made reports save 10 hours per week at Mola!
Like many hotels looking to optimize operations and maximize revenue, the team at Mola! spent hours each week manually creating reports. Then, after years of paperwork (and papercuts), the Spanish hostel and apartment brand discovered the time-saving magic of ready-made reports in Mews.
Availability and occupancy, guests and reservations, financials... reports that previously took the team 10 long hours to create now take just a few clicks.
We wanted to make it a lot easier for hoteliers to access the insights that are buried deep in their data. Mission accomplished. But did we stop there? Err no, we didn’t. We thought, what if you could schedule reports so they’re automatically generated, exported and then emailed? So, we did that too. Now, you don’t even need to remember or make time to generate your regular reports; they just appear. Ta da.
With Mews as their hospitality PMS, Mola! grew their business by 17% and streamlined the experience for guests and staff.
Case 2: Housekeeping software reduces calls to front desk by 93% at C-Hotels
When it comes to inefficient hotel operations, time-wasting calls between the front desk and housekeeping are a major culprit. Naturally, where there’s an opportunity to save hoteliers time through technology, we came up with a solution: our housekeeping app.
C-Hotels, a group of nine individually styled hotels along the Belgian coast, were looking for a flexible PMS to help them drive profitability. When they made the switch to Mews, housekeeping staff started using digital devices instead of paper notes to update room statuses and assign tasks. Real-time updates meant the front desk could instantly see if a room was ready and calls between the two teams reduced by a gigantic 93%.
That wasn’t the only time-saving optimization the C-Hotels team made thanks to Mews; they halved their average check-in time, too. Speaking of which...
Case 3: Automation saves Paradise Resort Gold Coast 6+ minutes at every check-in
Before Paradise Resort Gold Coast switched their PMS, you knew it was 2 p.m. by the long queue at the front desk (and sometimes out the front door). But with a little help from Mews, the property’s check-in process now takes six minutes less and is smoother than a freshly laundered bed sheet. How did this miracle come about, you ask? Excellent question.
The answer is a series of time-saving automations. First, payments. Before Mews, the reservations team would chase and manually process payments. It was slow, tedious and vulnerable to human error. Now, over 80% of guests pay prior to arrival with zero manual input needed. It’s fast, easy and error-free. Second, an automated guest journey enables guests to enter details like passport numbers online, slashing manual front-desk admin.
Revenue Manager Rebecca Lane noticed the difference for both staff and guests: “It’s amazing. Guests have paid in full in advance, so everything’s smooth and check-ins take about 30 seconds. The change in our reservations office was massive. The team is less caught up doing manual procedures like sending confirmations and taking payments.”
Case 4: Frictionless payment processing saves Emerald Stay 10 hours every week
When you operate a portfolio of privately owned chalets, villas and premium homes that span an entire mountain range and two different continents, efficient remote management is vital to a healthy profit. With no onsite staff, Emerald Stay needed an easy, seamless and secure way to take payments online rather than a time-consuming manual process.
Enter Mews Payments. Emerald Stay now takes payments automatically at any stage during the booking journey and the stay itself. At check-out, extra purchases are automatically cashed in with no manual input from the reservation team. Together, these automations save the team 10 hours every week. It’s a win for guests, too; they get hassle-free, online payments and peace of mind with 3DS, PCI-DSS and PSD2 security protocols.
Co-founder Lauren Lacourt sums it up: “Automated payments and online check-in are unbelievable time-savers for us. It makes the day-to-day so much easier for our reservations team and creates a hassle-free experience for our premium guests.”
Case 5: Channel manager integration saves EMA House 3 hours a day
As hospitality professionals, we’d love every booking to be direct. But the reality is that most hotels need a distribution strategy that includes OTA giants like Booking.com. That being the case, it’s important to manage hotel listings on those platforms as efficiently as possible.
EMA House, a hotel/apartment hybrid with six city-center locations in Zurich, drastically cut the time spent on manual tasks. Before switching to Mews, their channel manager wasn’t integrated with their PMS. So, every time they received a booking through an OTA, an unlucky member of front desk staff had to manually input all the details into the PMS. Not only did this eat up three hours every day, mistakes could easily creep in.
By moving to Mews, EMA House could fully integrate their channel manager meaning reservation data is automatically entered into their PMS (and three hours is magically returned to their team).
Like the idea of three extra hours in your day? Learn more about Mews with a self-guided product tour.
Case 6: Aplend Apartments & Resorts trains new staff 80% faster (from 5 days to 1)
When staff turnover is high, like it is in the hospitality industry, training new employees is time-consuming and costly. To help hotels address this challenge, we’ve put a lot of thought into making Mews quick to learn and easy (as well as fun) to use.
Every screen is clean, modern and easy to understand, from the reservation timeline to guest profiles. User flows are logical and designed to be familiar to today’s technology users.
That’s what the team at Aplend Apartments & Resorts found when they started using Mews. Despite complex operations across multiple hotels, villas, apartments and outdoor activities, their staff found the PMS easy to use. Training new employees was 80% faster; instead of five working days, it took just one. This huge time saving also has a ripple effect for more experienced employees: instead of providing tech support, they can focus on mentoring junior staff members and elevating the guest experience.
Intrigued by how Mews could save you and your team hours every day?
Take a closer look at the unique stories of all our featured customers:
Author
Jen Harris
IDC Study: The Business Value of Mews Hospitality Cloud
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