We’re currently exploring the implementation of self check-in at our hotel, but we’ve run into some challenges regarding group bookings.
At the moment, when a guest who is part of a group tries to check in via self check-in, they can see all reservations under the same group. In addition, the first person who checks in is prompted to pay for the entire group reservation, which isn’t ideal for us.
Since we often work with groups, this setup doesn’t fit well with our operations. We’d love to hear how other hotels handle this scenario:
Do you have a specific process or workaround for group check-ins?
Have you configured anything in Mews to separate or simplify individual check-ins within a group booking?
Any best practices or lessons learned you could share?
Thanks in advance for your insights!
Best answer by adrianne.flores
Hello @Tobi Petit
Thanks for bringing this up!
Right now, when guests in a group use self check-in, they’ll see the whole group trip in the Guest Portal, and the first person at the kiosk is usually asked to pay for everything (since the reservation owner is responsible for the full balance by default).
Here are a few tips that seem to work best for other properties:
✅ Give each room its own reservation owner before sending out invites — that way, every guest gets their own Guest Portal link and only sees their own booking.
💳 Tweak your kiosk payment settings so the first guest isn’t asked to pay the entire group balance. You can use pre-authorizations instead of full payments or turn off the balance check at the kiosk.
Bonus tip: turning on bill splitting at the kiosk helps if guests want to pay just their share.
Getting the reservation ownership and payment policies right makes group self check-ins much smoother! 🙌
Firstly to avoid the payment issue, you can route via Billing Automation to an individual Paymaster account for the group, which should avoid this. as for seeing all of the group, hmmmmmmm….. that may be because everyone is on as a companion rather than owner or vice versa?? How to change the owner of a reservation in Mews Operations
I would check with your CSM at mews on that, but logic dictates its the owner/companion issue maybe?
Right now, when guests in a group use self check-in, they’ll see the whole group trip in the Guest Portal, and the first person at the kiosk is usually asked to pay for everything (since the reservation owner is responsible for the full balance by default).
Here are a few tips that seem to work best for other properties:
✅ Give each room its own reservation owner before sending out invites — that way, every guest gets their own Guest Portal link and only sees their own booking.
💳 Tweak your kiosk payment settings so the first guest isn’t asked to pay the entire group balance. You can use pre-authorizations instead of full payments or turn off the balance check at the kiosk.
Bonus tip: turning on bill splitting at the kiosk helps if guests want to pay just their share.
Getting the reservation ownership and payment policies right makes group self check-ins much smoother! 🙌
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