Transcript
Introduction to Mews Summer Release
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talk. And this week, I have Adam for the second time. And Adam is the only person who's ever come twice, but it's because he comes with great news, and that's why I invited him back. Hey, Adam.
Hello. Good morning.
So today's topic is obviously back on product because Adam is a Product Director, and I wanted him because I heard about a release that's up and coming. I said, you must come back, and we must talk about these things because they excite the hell out of me. This Summer Release, it's called, because whilst you've all been on holiday, we've kept working, and we've been building these incredible features that are getting released as a result of the summer. And the summer release is called Smooth Operations, which I love. Why is it called that? And what is, you know, what's some of the highlights that we're gonna talk about today?
Look. Smooth Operations. So it's all about, you know, giving the guests an effortless experience and then making sure hotels have the tools that they need, which are just working in the background. You know, we don't want people using the system. We want everything automated as much as we can, you know, and it's not just about efficiency and and automating those tasks, but it's all about the guest experience and making sure that they have an awesome arrival, in-stay, and departure experience at the hotels.
Nice. All the things that I talk widely about on the Internet and all the frustrations that I have, and I can't wait to hear some of the stuff that you've been doing. And I in the pre talk, there are several things that's, like, right, we're doing that. That is so exciting.
So I'm really excited to start digging in. We've got three themes that we're gonna talk through, so we will break it into little blocks. And the first one is really, how do we perfect that online check-in experience or that smooth arrival at the hotel? The second one is really, how can we help give you more information about your guests and create those really personal experiences?
And then the last one is really, how do we improve the back office operations, some of the automations that we've built there to make that experience an even better one? We wanted to start with the online check-in experience and some of the stuff we've implemented there. Do you wanna kick off with that one?
Absolutely. Let's start where it begins.
You receive your email or your SMS inviting you to do that online check-in. You fill in all the data that the hotel requires, which varies from country to country and also business to business. No two
Chapter
Guest ID and selfie collection
hotels are the same here. And the first thing that we added in is the ID or passport and the guest selfie collection.
Now in some hotels, you know, they're required to send this passport number to the local police or the authorities every night. Some hotels operate, you know, mixed accommodation and have staffless environments. So to keep their guests safe, they want to capture that information, even though it's not legally required. So now the hotels are able to configure whether they optionally require this information or whether they make it a hard requirement for you to do your online check-in for me.
Why this is so important is because the online check-in needs to replace that staffed experience at the hotel. There is nothing more frustrating as a guest of going and doing your online check-in, filling in everything. And then you arrive at the hotel and then they ask for your passport information and you have to go through your bag.
And this happened to me yesterday when checking in and I'm staying at a hotel from a very, very big brand. And I completed all my online check-in through their app. I didn't, wasn't asked for any passport information. The moment I got to the hotel, she takes it, swipes it through the keyboard.
And I've already put that document away.
If the data is already in the system, why do they still require the passport, do you think?
To make sure that, you know, you made the reservation, to make sure it's your card that paid for it. And also in the hotel I'm staying at, they require it for reporting it to their authority. So they want to make sure the data rendered is correct. And that's why, so now in the online check-in flow and also the kiosk in flow, using the guest camera, they can take a photo, it extracts the data.
Meaning, I just put the passport in front of the camera and it just captures it?
Yep. Exactly. And it's really, really fast as well. The cameras in phones now are so nice with all the auto focus.
It happens really, really quickly. The hotel set their deletion period, so we can make sure that the hotels are only storing that information for as long as they need. Soon as you leave, that gets automatically deleted, so it's never accessed there. And, of course, it's all protected through two-factor authentication, passkeys, Single Sign-On. Right.
I actually think this is gonna be such a big solution. In some countries, they're not that strict, but in some countries, they are. And it really ruins that online check-in flow because we try and do all of that stuff beforehand, and then they get to their cell, and they still have to whip out their passport. So I'm really excited for countries like, for example, the Czech Republic where we have our head office, where we always end up checking in, but you have to always take out your passport. So it's gonna be a massive solution. There is one thing that you're adding also there, which I like, on your passport, you have got a photo, but you're also adding a selfie mode into the online check-in. Right?
Yeah. Absolutely. So, that selfie is, you know, meant to pair with that verification, but we have hotels who are using it just as a standalone. And they have it optional for the guests.
Really nice high-end boutique hotels, small amounts of rooms with lots of staff there. So by requesting that selfie, then the guest can be treated like a rock star. There is nothing nicer than rocking up to the hotel, and they already know who you are because they can see your smiling face there on their arrivals list. There's an airline that I constantly fly who does this really, really nicely, and they extract it from the passport.
But when they come over and give you that greeting because you know you're a high-end loyalty member, they've got that photo of you on their tablet, which is super nice. So that's where the inspiration for this came from.
It's so good. Like and I remember from when I was working at the front desk and we were on POS, so we had a blue screen. So there was definitely not gonna be any graphic image of a guest, but it really is important. Right?
If you're a large hotel to recognize your regular guest or how do you make sure that the next shift if I've checked you in, I'll remember you. But my colleagues that have checked in the next shift, they won't recognize you, but these are loyal returning customers. So, you know, you'd go to the morning meeting and you'd normally, you'd have a printout. That it's a perfect way to print out some of your regular guests and what they look like and what their, like, preferences are.
And we'll get to the preferences later. But recognition of the guest is one of the most important thing. And if you've never met them, that is really, really difficult. Super, super nice.
Chapter
Apple Wallet room keys
And then we posted about Apple key on the interwebs before, but can you just share because we've now released it. We've got it live in hotels. Can you explain what it is?
Absolutely. Back in 2021 at the worldwide developer conference that Apple have, you know, they announced this, that hotel keys can now be put into Apple Wallet, and the technology's been there. So it's been a long time before now it's actually in hotels and adopted by guests. So we partnered with, Assa Abloy, who's the first POS partner that we've partnered with this.
So it works with their Vostio solution, which sits in the cloud. So, you know, no plastic keys, no app downloads. But the nicest part about wallet is it's a complete web experience. So you've done that online check-in through web.
You press a button. You've already signed into your iCloud account on iPhone or on your Google account on Android, and then it adds it to your wallet. You can even do this on desktop. So you're checking in, at your computer or on your Mac, and then you can add that to your wallet from there, and it just appears on your phone and your watch.
So it sits in your phone. It's sitting there. Then the arrival check happens, all that automation that we have. Hotel set this, whether it's the balance, the room inspected, online check to complete, all the rules they need for a guest to just go straight to their room.
And then the guest just receives a push notification saying, your key is ready. We go. You tap your phone. You don't need to unlock anything because it works in that express transit mode, like what you're used to with public transport.
If your phone runs out of battery, it still works due to the power reserve that's built in the phone. It is so nice. Like I've been waiting for this forever.
And, yeah, we've gone live with one hotel. There's two others going live this week, and there's a huge, huge pipeline of customers. We put that release out, and then all these inquiries started flooding us. Yeah. I'm look, I'm just really excited that we can push this technology forward, and we can get hotels to adopt it.
I just came back from my summer holiday, and I stayed at a big brand hotel as well. The big brands always have their own app with digital keys built in. I challenged myself for nine days to never use the plastic key. I gave up after a few days because it works.
Right? So you open your phone with your face recognition. You then have to go find the app, then you have to open the app, and sometimes it locks you out of the app. So you have to log back into the app, and then you have to press open the key.
And then there's a five second delay because you have to hold it to the door, and it has to communicate so it works. And it was nice that I didn't have to always think about my plastic key. Like, the most commonly asked question is, did you bring the key or do you have the key?
Every time we leave the room and, like, we stopped doing that after a while, but the delays, the pains of opening an app and, like, what is so nice about Apple Wallet, I have it on my, I could have it on my watch, and I just tap it. And I don't even have to open an app on my watch on the terrible user interface. I just hold it against the lock. And I think that is the power because it's as fast as a plastic key.
Because the thing that we loved about plastic keys is that it just, it was fast. It's just clunky having a plastic key that, you know, you have to throw away or you have to remember to keep with you at all times. So I can't wait to check into an Apple key hotel. Yeah.
Or Google. We're also working on Google.
There's a lot coming. Oh, yeah. As you said, it's just so fast, which is really nice. Everyone trusts mobile payments on their devices already. Like, I don't leave the house with my wallet anymore because I've got my, I've got my watch and my phone. So it's the exact same technology as that, which is really nice.
Nice. So those are some of the exciting features for the online check-in. So passport verification, selfie mode, and Apple key. So real, real improvements that make that journey from checking in once you're on the road on your personal device to actually getting into the room really, really smoothly.
And it's not just online check-in as well. So it's also kiosk check-in. And, you know, our kiosk is really to bridge that gap. There's some hotels which don't want to dive and go full into guests arriving themselves.
We get it. It's scary. It takes time. So I challenge everyone, put the kiosk in there, even if you're using it in staff mode, because then you can start using all this technology.
So what what changed on the kiosk then?
So now on the kiosk, also, that selfie and that verification flow has been added in there. And for the key, now we give the guest the option. Hey. Do you want a wallet key, or would you like to continue with the traditional plastic key?
And that's nice. Right? So if you think about when you switch your kiosk into staff mode, you send a trainee into the lobby saying, hey. Go and check these people in, but you still had to cut the plastic key.
Right? You still had to have an encoder somewhere in the lobby. Whereas now, they can actually do the full check-in because payments were already completely automated. So the only thing that you needed the only device was that key encoder.
So with Apple Wallet, you can actually just completely go mobile
Chapter
Personalizing guest experiences
in that case.
Absolutely. Yep.
Nice. Let's switch to personalization of guest experiences. What can you tell me that we're releasing there?
Yeah. So we are releasing a lot to do with their guest lifetime value. So a lot of hotels using Mews already have seen on the timeline, we changed that returning icon to now be more granular so you can see. See.
It's funny. I did a cross exposure in hotels the other day, and they didn't realize what all the icons meant. And I'm like, but they're such a good primer. And that returning arrow, it's like a circular arrow, meaning returning. Right? So, like, it's over and over returning.
And it's so important. That's why we use iconography everywhere because using words is much harder to interpret, and icons are so fast. So everywhere you go, you see all the icons. So you know if it's a difficult customer, if it's a VIP customer, returning customer, female, person with children. So the icons actually matter, but we do update them sometimes.
And now the icons are smarter. So that returning icon, it now shows that number, how many times the guest has stayed, which is really nice. So you'll be on the timeline. You'll see that Adam has stayed fifty times in this hotel.
Fantastic. You'll click on it. And then now we've got the smart tip, the AI summary that we have of all the guest notes, classification, dietary requirements. That is now in that timeline view too.
So you don't need to go into the guest profile to see it. So the smart tip is there, and it's there for all of the companions because you might not just be traveling by yourself. You may be traveling with another guest who has history at the hotel or the hotel chain. So that's one thing.
Chapter
Customer lifetime value through a granular view
Then on the customer profile, you can now see all of these lifetime value insights. You'll be able to see the total spend they've had at the hotel or the hotel chain, the number of nights, the number of reservations.
But what I really, really love is the granular insights piece, because there you can see all of the items that the guest has ordered. So for me, you know, it'll probably have on there beer, red wine, and then probably a steak, because those like, I'm pretty basic. Those are the things I mainly eat there. But that then allows the hotels to say, okay, Adam commonly orders this item.
When we give him his welcome amenity, maybe we should actually base it off this data. And this data isn't just based off items entered in the PMS. It's through Mews POS as well. So whether the guest is charging things to their room or if I tap my credit card, if that credit card matches what I've got on my Mews profile
Chapter
AI-powered Smart Tips
inside of the property management system, those details are being merged so we can still capture those insights as well.
So that tooltip, and we've talked about this before. We've got these AI tooltips, and we use an AI large language model to consume everything we know about customers. And, previously, we would read the reservation notes, the guest notes, anything you collected about the customer, but we didn't always look at what's on their bill of the previous stay. And, like, there is such valuable information on knowing what they purchased, if they bought the upgrade last time or if they enjoy beer and pizza at this hotel.
So now we consume even so they become smarter tips, basically. Yep. That consume more and more information. And we have now integrations. So if you think about review platforms that engage with guests saying, hey.
Would you like to leave a review? And if the guest then actually ends up leaving a review, that information should feed back into Mews so we can consume it to these smart tips. When that returning icon appears, we now know whether you were with us before, whether you like pizza and beer, but also what you thought of us as a hotel last time. And it's so important to take all of that information, but then condense it to a really smart, short tooltip.
And it's not even just your hotel as well. Maybe the guest stayed at a different hotel in the chain, and they had a bad experience and left a bad review. Then this. then they've given you a second chance. They've given your chain a second chance. You can now go into that service recovery mode and say, okay. They had a horrible stay at this hotel. I'm gonna make sure they have an amazing stay here and then fix that service recovery.
And then the second part that you talked about, which was the guest lifetime value, which is the holy grail of hospitality in my opinion. Like, I remember working in hotels, and I was like, oh, who are the most regular customers? And no one would be able to pull that information easily. Sure.
You could find it. You'd have to work a few hours to pull that kind of report, but you should be able to see on the guest profile of your arrivals exactly how many times it states. What's what have they spent? Right?
Is this a high-value customer or a low-value customer? Customer who books with you at a cheap rate and then goes to eat outside the hotel? Or is this a guest who actually stays with you and spends money at the hotel? So you know you need to rope them into kind of that experience.
That guest lifetime value is honestly the holy grail once we started connecting all the dots of, they pay by credit card in the restaurant. So we didn't really know it was me eating at the restaurant. But through the credit card token, we can connect it back to my profile and merge those things together. That makes it incredibly rich.
And, on that smart tip, you know, last time I came to Prague, I was staying at a hotel, and this hotel doesn't have ironing boards in their room. And when I was checking in, the lady checking me in, she looked at the smart tip and saw that it mentions in there, he often requests an ironing board because they've saved that to my profile. And then I heard her say something into the radio to housekeeping. And as soon as I walk into the room, not even a minute later, I hear this knock, and it's like, oh, the ironing board you requested.
I didn't request anything. They just saw that tip. And then, like, I was so happy about that. I posted on LinkedIn.
I told everyone in the office. I was like, this is amazing. The technology works.
Yeah. I love that. And you talked like, in our pre-conversation, we talked about VIP setups. Right?
In hotels, I remember when I worked in hotels, we'd have five VIP setups. You know, one was a welcome card from the GM, two was chocolates, and three was a fruit basket. And you went up the rank, basically, and they were so standardized. They didn't think about the guests.
They were just like, here's a fruit basket. I don't even know if you like fruit, but here's a basket because you're a VIP three. But this, like, insights on guests allows you to really customize and get much more creative. And, you know, AI allows you to think, okay.
Right. This is what they consumed before. What do you recommend I do as a VIP amenity? And I haven't yet seen anyone use it.
Have you seen anyone do it already?
I've seen hotels do it manually. They're using it, but these are the hotels which really pay attention to it. And, you know, I feel like I'm gonna give a spoiler here, but this is, how we can automate this data is something that we're we're working on at the moment. So we're gonna have to do another Matt Talks in a couple months' time.
So I'll be the, I'm going to keep being at the leaderboard of the people that are being on on this, on this podcast.
We want to take this data. So now we've gathered the data. We're showing it to get to the hotel. Now the third stage of this is how we automate this.
And this shouldn't just be for the hotels, who are doing this already and saving them time. This should be for everyone. Even if you're a hotel with minimal staff, if you've got returning guests, you should still reward them. So, yeah, stay tuned for that.
That.
Chapter
Improving back-office ops
So that was the second block, which is all about guest information, guest profiles, collecting as much information, and then giving you back the information so you can do something really personal with those pieces of information.
The third block is around more of a back office operation so that we give you time back, but also the experience is just much smoother for the guest. What can you tell us about the behind the scenes?
Yeah. So everyone
would have seen we have invested a lot into
Chapter
Dynamic conditions for emails
our guest communication, so our emailing from the system. We've put a nice new fancy editor in there so you can, visualize your emails. You can customize it.
But one of the things that this has unlocked is those dynamic conditions. There is nothing more frustrating than when I'm staying for business and I'm in this a hundred percent work mode, I'm a workaholic. That's just how I operate. And I wanna know what can I do to get into my room as quickly as possible?
And then the emails are bloated with all this content about the big bus tour, about buying tickets to the museum. I don't care about any of that. I am a business guest. I am here to work.
So now we allow hotels to separate their email, confirmations before start emails, after start emails based on segments, based on rate groups, based on the space that they've ordered. So for people like me, you can just have a very simple email saying, welcome. Thank you for your business. This is what we need you to do.
We know that you're busy to get into your room. And then for the leisure guests, sell them on the city. Tell them about all this great information. So that's the first thing that we've done, which is the dynamic email conditions.
And you mentioned that also when hotels take reservations by phone. Right? So you have a phone conversation with the customer about, whatever, their dog, their kids, and then they make the reservation, but then you get a very generic email. And even those can be customized now. Right?
Absolutely. If someone's calling up, they want that personal connection. Right? Maybe they were struggling online, or maybe they are from a different generation that, you know, appreciate speaking to people.
So now. Yeah like us. Exactly, like us. So now, when you create that reservation, you can add that custom message in. So if you were speaking to, you know, a lovely lady talking about her pet that she's had for years that she's bringing to your hotel.
You can put that personalized message into the email. And, yeah, it makes the guest day. So that's added in as well now.
We have supermarkets in the Netherlands where there is a lane when you're on the checkout, which is the slow lane for chatty people. So if you wanna have a conversation, you can go in that lane, and you can have an endless conversation with people around you. And it's apparently become such a big hit because that is a certain type of people, and you get those in hotels as well. The ones that come to the reception desk, because they just really enjoy that experience, we shouldn't rush them because there's a business traveler behind them.
Right? The business traveler will check in online. They'll do all of it unless you force them to give their passport at the reception desk. So you have to think about all these different customer segments and saying business, let's automate the heck out of it because these customers, they do not wanna hear about the big bus tour in the city.
But my grandma, who will check in, she loves that experience. They want to hear about the city and all the tips that you have, so having a queue behind your grandma isn't
Chapter
Billing automations
gonna be conducive to that experience.
Exactly. And then, you know, also for those business guests. So, on the kiosk again, you know, we've made big improvements to the billing flow because one of the things that was slowing those guests down was they needed to edit their bills to add corporate information on there to make sure their organization would approve their expenses. Or maybe they had a really late night at the bar, and they can get away with expensing two beers, but probably not twelve.
So now they can actually manage their bills, split those items off, pay separately. So that's really, really nice for the business guests, but also for those leisure guests too. You know, if you've gone on a weekend getaway with two friends and you're gonna split it, now you can just be like, Hey, you pay that night. I'll pay this night and just do it straight there.
So we've added a lot in to do with how the billing works on the kiosk and also the billing automation to make sure those things, that revenue and those payments are automatically being routed to the right place.
Because the kiosk works incredibly well. But, really, the biggest focus was check-in because check-in is the most painful process of a hotel where we gotta check your information, you gotta do the upsell, you gotta take the credit card, you gotta issue a key. So check-in had always been our focus, but we shifted that now because we actually feel that the check-in is in a perfect state. We shifted the attention to the checkout because often, you know, some hotels automate it.
So you just get to the kiosk, you say your room number, and you're checked out. But some hotels and we see we've been growing a lot in Germany, for example, where there's a lot of German travelers who require their billing address to be correct on the bill. So now that the online check or the kiosk check-out is, you know, update your billing address, making sure that your alcoholic items are separate out from your bill because your company won't pay for that. Did you have anything from the minibar?
So that entire checkout flow is now built in the kiosk end-to-end. And then once you check out, your bill's instantly in your inbox as well. So it becomes a fully fledged kiosk that does not only fully fledged check-in, but also the check-out.
And, as well, you know, it's not just for minibar as well. Hotels can sell, you know, merchandise on check-out as well. You know, whether you wanna bring a gift home for, you know, your partner or maybe your kids. I saw a really, really nice hotel.
We have a channel where our team are sharing photos of the kiosks in the wild. And I saw this photo of the kiosk and next to it was a lovely stack of these candles, which were made exclusively before that hotel. So now like the guest can say, yep. I would like to purchase that candle, grab it and then leave.
So it's also really nice for that grab-and-go use case too.
Love nowadays that because we're so global, friends of mine send me photos of check-ins that they're doing at Mews hotels, and it just makes me so happy because it's not just, you know, in the Netherlands, where we're, you know, the number one. But it's like, in Japan, I got a photo from a friend the other day who was in the mountains in Japan, and then she took a photo of the check-in kiosk. And I was like, that is so, so great.
I love it. Yeah. I get the exact same, and it's, yeah, a fantastic reminder of, you know, what we're building the product for, which is great. I always say, you know, to my team, the things I'm building are for myself as a traveler. So now I'm happy that it's spreading and I'm actually building things for other people that I know.
Thank you. As I think you can tell, me and Adam get very excited about because we travel every single week for work. So we get excited about the innovations, and we often stay in non-Mews hotels so that we really get the other experience. And when we stay at a Mews hotel, we always do the comparative notes every time I call in. But I'm really excited about this release. I feel like this is a massive step forward for guest experiences around the world. Thank you for sharing it so openly, and I'm excited to hear some of the guest feedback after they started using it.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on the second time.
I like how you're like the second time. Thank you.
