We have a few properties in Spain, and one of them relies entirely on online check-in. About a month ago, we migrated from our previous PMS to Mews, and since then we’ve experienced a huge amount of friction with the online check-in process. Around 99% of our reservations require manual intervention due to issues with the check-in flow.
I’d like to ask those of you who have more experience with Mews for some advice on how you’re handling this operationally.
In Spain, Mews online check-in process does not allow the main guest to complete the registration details for all guests in the reservation. Instead, every guest (including children) must be individually invited via email, with a different email address for each person.
This creates several operational challenges:
We need the primary guest to be able to complete the entire check-in for everyone in the reservation. If a family is travelling together, it is simply not realistic to ask for four different email addresses, especially when children often don’t have their own email accounts.
If the primary guest chooses to skip the step of adding and inviting the accompanying guests (which, in our opinion, should be a property-level configuration, as many properties don’t have a 24-hour reception) and completes the online check-in, we run into another major issue: there is no way for the primary guest to go back and invite the remaining guests and we as the hotel cannot send invitations to the remaining guests in the reservation so they can complete their online check-in.
Since we are required to report all guest details to the Spanish Hospedajes system, this has been a significant step backwards for us. It has created far more manual work and is much more time-consuming than any efficiency gains Mews is supposed to deliver in other areas.
Has anyone experienced similar issues? If so, how are you managing this operationally? Have you found any workaround or best practice?
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.