VAT Changes for Breakfast Products in Germany - How Are You Handling It in Mews?

Hi Robin,

Inka from Mews wrote the following in the DACH group:

“...There is still no solution regarding breakfast products that will be subject to two different tax rates in the future. Our tech team is already working on finding a way to offer products with different tax rates correctly via the booking systems and to make them easily visible on invoices.

However, we cannot promise that there will be a solution before the changeover. Therefore, you will have to work with two separate products in the meantime.

As soon as there is any news on this, you will be notified. If you have any questions in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Inka Nebel” (thanks to deepl.)

So work is being done on it.

We will probably work with an open split for guests until the final result. So both breakfast rates, Food and Bev will be listed separately on the bill. It's not ideal, but...
 

Best regards

Leif

Hello Leif,

Thank you for updating me with the information you have from ​@inka.nebel . Let’s really keep our fingers crossed that Mews finds a solution before the new VAT rules take effect.

For us, the main issue is that we sell rooms including breakfast, and the breakfast product has already been posted to hundreds of upcoming reservations. If I edit the product rule by including another product, all future reservations will have this additional product cost added on top of the final price - meaning all future reservations will become more expensive than they should be.

I’ve also found that actions like check-in will trigger the product rule and increase the price.
 

Our absolute last resort would be to manually trigger the updated product rule and then manually reduce the nightly rate by the same amount added by the breakfast beverage product. This would have to be done for all existing reservations that include breakfast. As you can understand, this is simply not feasible.
​
 

Hi Robin,

yes, it's the same for us.
We will most likely change the price of the current breakfast product, add the new breakfast product Bev, and manually adjust reservations on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis, hoping that Mews will offer a solution soon.
Hope springs eternal.

Best regards

Leif

Hello,

Yes, we will also update our breakfast prices for 2026; however, the prices for products already posted to reservations will remain unchanged. When the updated product rule is triggered (for example, at check-in), the prices of already-posted products are not updated. Only the product newly added to the product rule will be added on top.

Hopefully, Mews has a solution for this so that we do not have to manually adjust all reservations.

Hello! 👋

Yesterday, I received an email from Mews with a solution to the issue. ​@Leif Penning  did you receive it as well? If not, feel free to send me a message with your email address, and I will forward it to you. The same goes for anyone else who didn’t receive the email but needs it.

Hey ​@Robin Gustavsson, I´d be interested in this mail, thanks :)

Best regards, Niclas 

Thanks ​@Robin Gustavsson 
We are working on sending out email communications to affected customers this week, as well as an article for this community.
We have also just published this help article walking you through the process to prepare for this change:
How to prepare for the 2026 Germany VAT change in Mews Operations

Any further questions that the help article doesn’t answer, the team will be happy to answer.

Thanks

Perfect! 🌟

Hey Sarah, thanks for your reply. In the help article it says we´re supposed to submit a form with the updated product mapping. Why are we doing this? :)

Best regards, Niclas

​@Sarah.Masterton-Brown , 

A question regarding the section marked in yellow: If the price of the two new products must be equal to the price of the old product, what is the difference between submitting the mappings to Mews and updating our product rules ourselves with CANCEL: Breakfast 2025 and ADD: Breakfast Food 2026 & Breakfast Beverage 2026?
 

This is another scenario where my feature request for specifying the start and end dates of a product rule would be extremely valuable, as it would allow us to perform the update today rather than having to wait until the actual start date.
 

Might the difference be that Mews can trigger this instantly, whereas our product rules are only triggered and updated when the reservation is checked in? I know that changing the price of a product does not update the price for products already posted. This means that if I update the product rule and trigger it upon check-in, the price will be updated if it has changed, whereas Mews’ update of the product rule will keep the product prices intact.

Am I correct in my assumption?

Hi everyone, I’ve passed on your questions and will get back to you as soon as I receive feedback. Thank you very much for your patience.

Hi ​@Niclas Lundström  & ​@Robin Gustavsson this is the answer to your questions I have received from the team: 
The obvious recommended solution is that customers create 2 split component products and sell them. However, it may be unhandy (or outright impossible in some systems) to have travellers “select and add” 2 products when all they want to add is a breakfast buffet. In such a scenario, we have the ability to “accept” a reservation with a single “bundled-product” (like breakfast) and then replace it (after being processed) by its components. This way travellers are not bogged down by needing to select multiple products, when all they want is a single breakfast. This use case is exacerbated in add-on products, not packaged products, since product rules can be changed to add the components directly (as is recommended).

​@Robin Gustavsson see below response from the team:
Good question! Product rules only deal with scenarios where the breakfast is packaged with the rate. However, they do not support upselling (for instance through the Kiosk or emails). Here, it is non-optimal to force the guest to select multiple component products. For these scenarios, we can use the mappings that the hotel submits to automatically replace the bundle with its consituents.

I hope this helps clear things up a bit. If you have any further questions, please let me know!

Hello ​@jessica.becker 👋

Thank you for getting back to me.

I now understand that this is a kind of quick fix by Mews to achieve “bundle products.”
Seeing it like that makes sense, as your own booking engine needs some type of support for that.

However, we already sell breakfast on our rates as packaged items. In Mews this is done via a product rule, and in our CRS we create them as packages. Because of this, the solution is not fully applicable to us, and we are facing different issues.
 

I am a bit puzzled by the explanation below that I received from Mews by email. It states that the script does not deal with reservations that have already been made. For us, those are exactly the reservations that are causing issues, not how we sell breakfast online.
 

"The only issue here is that our script does not deal with reservations that have already been made; it deals with new incoming reservations. We do not re-run or even run any product rules. All we do is scan the reservation for products that need to be swapped out (as submitted in the XLS form). We find those products, cancel them, and swap them out for their components (as in the XLS form)."
 

With that being said, the only thing I can see the script doing for us is updating already posted upsell breakfast products with the correct split. Apart from that, the approach I mentioned earlier is the only way for us to ensure the correct setup and have our existing reservations updated accordingly.

Hi ​@Robin Gustavsson 

Thank you for your reply

I haven’t been able to track the email you speak off to understand the full context but, indeed, the job works differently and both systems run the risk of missing some reservations depending on your set up.

As per our article (How to prepare for the 2026 Germany VAT change in Mews Operations), we do indeed recommend that you set up already for your packaged products the 2 new products but with current (2025) VAT and ask us to update all your existing reservations. but as you pointed out there are limitations regarding upsell and manually added products.

If, as you said, your property(ies) are mainly using packaged products and your biggest concern is the already existing reservations, we do believe that the cleanest method is the product rule and mapping in your Distribution channel one , and indeed the fix job might have a lesser impact, though we would still recommend you also complete it. Then on January 1st, most (if not all) of your reservation will already have the 2 new products and you will be able to update the VAT as required at that time.

Regarding what you mentioned of needing to trigger each reservation one by one

• Support can run a job to help with that, which we do ask that you request as early as possible as we need to manually trigger said job (Step 5 about contacting Mews Support is for that exact purpose)
• What that job does is “resaving” the reservation which triggers newer product rule. If the job was not run before the reservation arrival, the check in should have the exact same effect on the reservations.

Hope the above helps

Kind regards

Hello! 👋

The emails were between myself, our CSM, and some other Mews team members, so you won’t find them as a standard support ticket.

“Support can run a job to help with that, which we do ask that you request as early as possible as we need to manually trigger said job (Step 5 about contacting Mews Support is for that exact purpose).”
Yes, that’s great! I’ve already been assisted with running the job for some of our properties. I’m still working on the rest, and I’ll be assisted with those as soon as I’m ready.

“What that job does is ‘resaving’ the reservation, which triggers the newer product rule. If the job was not run before the reservation arrival, the check-in should have the exact same effect on the reservations.”
I know - that’s what I was doing manually at one of my properties to see how long it would take in case Mews was unable to run the job in time. 😀

Having check-in as a trigger is both good and bad. Again, I see a lot of value in having start and end dates on product rules, as well as more granular conditions to apply products only if certain criteria are met, such as “Start date from: XXXX” or “Reservation stay period: XXXX to XXXX.”

Hello, I can´t find the micrsoft formular to send the new products to the MEWS Team, can you provide this again?

Hi ​@TorstenR you can find the form here. 

https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=wjfbr_ETeEq5HoV0msjoB-WEDoxYPphEgcumkSZitfZUN1dRVk8zSDZTRFo1OUFaNVhNRTM2RTI5Qi4u&route=shorturl

Hi Robin, 

We also think that would be a great feature. Much like the product bundling you mentioned earlier, this is one of the future developments being considered, but we have to provide guidance with the current limitations of the system.