“Mews handles all our vital background operations without ever getting in the way. This means we can provide every guest with a more personable, memorable experience.
About Heights House Hotel
Heights House Hotel is a restored 10,000-square-foot Italianate mansion in Raleigh’s Boylan Heights neighborhood, North Carolina. Built in 1858, it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was named in Travel + Leisure magazine’s 100 Best New Hotels in the world and recently awarded a MICHELIN Key. The hotel offers nine spacious rooms, sleeping up to 20 guests, alongside generous lounges, a bar, dining room and event spaces. Heights House Hotel is powered by Mews and run by Sarah and Jeff, a husband-and-wife
Running a high-touch property with a lean team
Challenge
Heights House isn’t just a hotel; it’s also a sought-after venue and gathering space, with weddings, private dinners and community events taking place across its 10,000 square feet. Yet behind all of that there’s a very lean team led by Sarah and Jeff.
Solution
Mews ensures that every reservation, guest profile and payment flows through a single, cloud-native system that staff can access from wherever they are. Room and event bookings are managed iname environment, so deposits, balances and incidentals are always linked to the right stay or function. The team spends far less time chasing card details, re-issuing invoices or reconciling payouts, and far more time in the spaces that matter. This allows a tiny, hands-on team to deliver the kind of attentive, high-touch service guests expect from a luxury mansion hotel, while relying on Mews to take care of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Result
No need for constant manual oversight
More engaged guests who book direct
Challenge
In keeping with their ethos of more personalized hospitality and to avoid high OTA commission rates, Heights House Hotel don’t use any channel managers. This makes it hugely important to have a direct booking system that works.
Solution
Mews Booking Engine is embedded directly into the website and styled to match the property’s visual identity, from photography to colors and typography. Real-time availability and rates are pulled straight from Mews PMS, while clear calendars and rules make it simple for guests to choose their dates, room type and any special offers. During the same flow, guests can add products like parking or early check-in as natural upsells, and payment is handled securely through the same Mews-powered journey, so there’s no need to jump between different systems or payment pages.
Result
• $77 average value added per reservation with numerous upsell options and rate types
Online check-in that’s a breeze
Challenge
Traditional check-in at a small, design-led hotel often means guests arrive in a beautiful space only to spend their first minutes on admin: forms, IDs and payment details.
Solution
Heights House invites guests to check in online before they arrive, using a simple, mobile -friendly flow that’s connected directly to their reservation in Mews. Guests can securely submit personal details, sign digital registration cards and add or confirm their payment method ahead of time, with
Mews tokenizing those details for later use. By the time guests walk through the front door, most of the admin has already happened in the background, so staff can focus on a warm welcome, a quick room orientation and recommendations for the neighborhood instead of typing into a terminal.
Result
• 31% online check-in rate
• 25% higher ADR for guests who check-in online
Frictionless payments for guests
Challenge
The transactional moments of a stay – deposits, pre-authorizations, final bills – can easily feel clunky or intrusive, especially in an intimate environment like Heights House. The team wanted payments to be almost invisible for guests while still being secure, compliant and reliable for a small business that depends on healthy cash flow and low risk.
Solution
Mews Payments is fully embedded into Mews PMS, so from the moment a guest books, every payment touchpoint is managed in one place. When guests enter their card details, those details are tokenized and stored securely, allowing the team to process deposits, pre -authorizations and final charges with a single click. The same payments infrastructure supports alternative methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay, giving guests more choice while keeping authorization and settlement consistent in the back office. Automated rules handle most of the routine charging, reducing the risk of human error and freeing staff from late-night manual reconciliations.
Result
• Only two chargebacks in four years
• A clear view of every transaction
“It’s great peace of mind to have an inbuilt payments solution that we know we can rely on, both in terms of security and providing a smooth guest experience.”
Integration spotlight
RoomPriceGenie
RoomPriceGenie specializes in revenue management for small to mid-sized hotels. The platform is simple to use, but with a powerful algorithm that optimizes room prices with very little input needed from the hotel team.
Booking.com
This integration allows Heights House Hotel to receive Booking.com reservations and manage inventory directly in Mews. The connection allows them to manage rates and restrictions easily.