Beta Program: Smarter Daily Workflow in Mews

HI ​@laura.asplin 
Can you please deactivate the option that employees can attend at the beta on their own? We would like all beta tests to be centrally managed and documented. On Friday, I'll have time to take a closer look at this test and see if we want to participate in the beta with one or more hotels. However, the decision should be made by me and not by the individual hotels themselves. If anyone has already agreed to participate, please remove the test from the respective hotel.
Thank you so much
Louisa

Hey Laura,

we were already Beta Customers of Daily Digest since a couple of weeks.

I had some discussions/calls with Madeline Bushbeck around this topic and provided feedback.

In general most of the task from Daily Digest doesnt make sense, at least not for our properties. Therefore we do not really use this feature. Is there a way to controll or setup this feature?

Best

Linus

May we join this beta? Amistat City hostel please

we just started this beta version about an hour ago and so far so good :) but I can’t find the suggestion of for example give the guest a drink ticket if that is written in the note. Shoudl we make a product for this and a product rule or why does it not show up as a suggestion on the guest profile? it is not a note in the profile itself since it a one time thing. It is in the reservation notes.

and is it possible to change the language it sets up the task in if the note is written in swedis for exmple? without having to change the language for mews itself?

​@anna.ahlen thanks for engaging. I would love to dig into what you are asking a little bit more.

Are you saying that you have a note on a specific profile to give a guest a drink voucher, and you were expecting that to generate a smart task, but it hasn’t? If so, can I ask did you add the note recently? I know that at the moment if the profile is updated then you can to click regenerate smart tips to create new tips based on the new data but we are changing that so it is triggered on reservation update.

Regarding the language we default to generate the tasks in the property language, can I ask why would you want it in a different language?

thank you laura.

the property language and my settings for mews is in english but we would like tasks to be in swedish since it is only for internal communication.. is there an option to choose which language the task is created in?

about the other question:

we have a package called sip & sleep where a drink ticket is included in the rate. When those reservations come in we manually change the rate code so the package products are included and manually add a note to the reservation about late check out at 13:00 and to give the guests a drink ticket. We would love it if the check out time and the note/task could be added automatically when we change the rate.

and we are also part of expedia VIP access program where the guests get a drink ticket upon arrival and would love it if somehow this could be made a note automatically if the reservation comes in as Expedia VIP.

Both of these are though more preferred like notes instead of tasks which sometimes is easier to see and nothing we have to manually close.

It has now been half a day and on almost every reservation we get daily digest suggestions which are not relevent. For example, breakfast. We have a product of breakfast that adds automatically and then deducted automatically. For bookkeeping reasons. But breakfast is always included with us and we do not need to have tasks about this.

and on all loyalty member reservations we get a suggestion of adding a welcome note and/or champagne, fruit platters. The daily digest list suddenly becomes very long.can we contoll in property setting what we want it to look for and create a task? can we make it create tasks automatically or do we have to check the reservation/daily digest and click create?

notes about for example sip & sleep package or sometimes early check in for example is not on the guest profile, it is notes in the reservation created automatically if someone writes this when they make the reservation

Thanks for the detail ​@anna.ahlen I will pass the feedback about languages on. However, having read your use case I think what you need more than Co Worker is Automations. The actions you are describing are very deterministic, i.e. if X do Y. This is exactly what our Automations Hub (also in Beta) is designed to address. As the automations hub stands it could address the following from your use cases: 

Would you like me to see if I can get you added to the Automations Beta so you can see if this helps towards some of your use cases?

Laura

yes that would be nice if we can try the automation beta aswell

Hi Laura ​@laura.asplin,

I believe we’re already part of the Beta, as I can see the Smart Tasks and the Daily Digest. However, I’m not sure where I can find the Property Context 🏢. Is there anything else that needs to be activated or enabled from your side?

Thanks :)

Hello ​@laura.asplin !

We opted into the beta as advertised in Mews, but the observation in the recent days is that the suggested tasks absolutely don’t make any sense at all - just hallucinated garbage, maybe slightly like an over eager sales person, trying to sell upgrades and early checkins, breakfast and other products no matter what ;-) Even as we did not setup any rules like that … and the rules we setup don’t trigger reliably.

Looks like this is a waste of resources, can you please disable it for our property again. And I hope once this rolls out to everyone it will be possible to disable/opt-out. 

The experience is like the smart tips for reservations, pointless summaries of information that is already there, but hidden away in hard to read text. Where is the time saving in that? I don’t get it, and I consider my self to be open minded towards new technology and AI, using it myself, but the way it’s used here doesn’t make any sense at all.

BTW:  I am missing the following AI specific features:

• MCP Server or simple JSON API to allow chatbots to query live inventory and prices, returning just that in a simple way together with a booking link that the chatbot can provide to the guest to finalize the booking. No need to create a whole new booking pathway
• Messaging: integration of third-party LLMs to help generate answers to guest messages, similar as you can attach WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram to many chatbots; possibly with a human escalation mechanism
• Auto-translate of email templates, texts in room descriptions, etc. to most of the languages of the world! This is doable, and I think can be done quite reliably, and is not a recurring resource hog, because it needs to be triggered only upon changes…
• that’s all for now …
• resposible AI: consider some hotels (like we) are eco-friendly certified, in that context it makes sense to evolve into a more conscious use of AI, the criteria in eco labels are not developed yet, but I think they should be. In that context it would make sense to be transparent in the use of resources, and make opting-out of resource hungry recurring, not needed AI features an option.

Hope you appreciate my honest feedback, don’t be mad at me ;-)

Best regards,

JP.

​@j.spiess thanks for the honest feedback, we really appreciate it especially during the beta period which is a great opportunity for us to learn, understand and improve!

I have taken a quick review of some of your smart tasks. Would it be ok if we leave this enabled for the next day so I can review them with my team? Also, we are looking to add a configuration which would allow you to disable this yourself and it should be available early next week.

One question I have is regarding the rules, you mentioned the rules you set up it seems to ignore. I can only see one rule in the property regarding birthdays. Have you a reservation where there was a birthday mentioned and it didn’t prompt to put in the room? Would you be willing to try adding some more rules to help the AI learn and see if it has an impact? Such a rule to explain the city tax offset and when this is or is not an issue. I.e. I assume with the city tax you add the city tax and then remove it, so is it more of a concern to you is there isn’t an adjustment? and should it flag this?

​@laura.asplin 

I also had a rule regarding extra beds and fold-out sofas, but it kept suggesting additional beds for reservations where there was no need to at all, so I tried to prevent that by first changing the rule a little bit, and then deleted it… still kept giving such suggestions. 

I don’t mind leaving it up for a while, so you can look for your self with real data ;-)

But please no more than a couple of days, it’s more confusing than anything else at this point. Maybe you can limit visibility to selected accounts (me), so that it does not interfere with daily operations?

The Citytax adjustments are just pure accounting purpose to correctly calculate city tax in Vienna. These products have no relevancy in regards to tasks what so ever.

What kind of rules would work? Something like “Ignore all city tax and city tax adjustments products”, “Ignore all extra bed related notes and don’t create tasks for that” (as we already have the notes that serve the same purpose in an efficient way)? Will negative rules work? I was expecting that only rules created in the setup would be used, but your system prompt seems to broadly anticipate a lot of task that might or might not make sense for any particular property either way… I think it would make more sense to start slow with only a very focused rule set where an additional value might be anticipated for the sepcific property.

BTW: I would rather like to have available a separate note category for housekeeping that would automatically sync to our HK app Sweeply, so that we DON’T have to manually transfer HK related notes over to sweeply - currently the whole junk of notes is synced and HK staff either need to sift through all that info that they have nothing to do with, or we need to highlight their notes by manually adding them again in a more approprieate field (daily notes per room). Also creating tasks for HK makes no sense when those tasks are not synced to the tools they use …

I still doubt that the system will yield a lot of benefit, think of it like this:

• it creates tasks - tasks to be completed by humans, who already have a lot of work load to fullfill
• will it be 100% reliable? no, it won’t, maybe 80% if we are lucky - but then we have another task for a human at hand - verify accuracy for every suggested action/task? Does the guest really want slippers in their room? Or is ist just a halucination?
• we usually really don’t have a lot of context for our guests in order to allow an AI to make a judgment what we could offer as a great add on to enhance their guest experience, maybe for chains that can draw from a history of past stays in other properties and offer a lot of additonal service…? IDK …
• An example:

Note free breakfast entitlement for smoother check-in

 

Why this suggestion

• The reservation includes multiple "Genius Free Breakfast (booking.com)" product orders, indicating breakfast is already included through the channel offer.
• Explicitly noting this helps front desk avoid offering paid breakfast again and prevents confusion or double-charging at check-in or during the stay.

Suggested steps

• Add a brief note to the reservation in the PMS that breakfast is included via "Genius Free Breakfast (booking.com)" for this stay.
• At check-in, proactively inform the guest that breakfast is already included and where/when it is served.
• Remind team members not to sell additional standard breakfast for this guest unless they request extras beyond the included offer.

Let’s put aside that no rule asked for that kind of suggestion. At first glance this makes sense, but let me walk through it:

• Add a note to the reservation … why, it’s already there ..?!
• Proactively inform the guest that breakfast is included at CI - good idea, but how will staff know it at the time the guests checks in? There is no mechanism in MEWS to show such an important note to staff on the check-in tablet in staff mode, or in Commander, to make them actively aware of it, so there sits a task that says, inform guests at check-in, but it’s not at your fingertips when you need it most…
• Remind team members not to sell additional bkfst - yeah good plan, but how would you do that? PostIt on the front desk? Chat Message on the internal message board? Note in the reservation, oh we already got that one … :-)
• So where is the benefit?

Another one

Confirm breakfast details and share gluten-free option

 

Why this suggestion

• The reservation already includes Breakfast incl. products, so the guest will have breakfast during the stay.
• The enterprise product catalog shows a complimentary Glutenfree Breakfast item, indicating the property can cater to gluten-free needs.
• Proactively confirming breakfast times and mentioning the gluten-free option can personalize the stay and avoid confusion at breakfast.

Suggested steps

• Before arrival, check the reservation to confirm that breakfast is included for the stay dates.
• Prepare a brief note or script at the front desk to inform the guest at check-in about breakfast times, location, and that gluten-free breakfast is available on request.
• If the guest indicates any dietary needs (e.g., gluten-free), add a note to the profile and inform the breakfast team so they can be ready on the following mornings.

First, you need to know, there is no indication whatsoever in the related reservation that the guest might need a gluten-free breakfast (which we offer with no additional charge, the product is simply there to have it on our breakfast list when we add it manually once a real request comes in).

• Check the reservation  to confirm that breakfast is included? - What did the AI just note above, yes it IS already included, what’s the point checking again?
• the remaining suggestions are standard checkin procedure, besides that it would probably come across a little awkward to ask any random guest for gluten-free options, right?

I think, as it is, this smart system needs some second thought…

Kind regards,

Jean-Philipp.

Hi Jean Philipp, thanks for the detailed response. I have time scheduled with the team this afternoon and once that is over I will request disablement for you.

I agree, those examples I noted myself in you property yesterday and wanted to use as discussion points with the team today, along with a few others.

While I do not know if our property is on the Advanced Guest Experience tier, if we are, I would like to participate in this beta. As described, many of the manual processes now in place (most of which fall on my to-do list because I have such a small staff) could possibly streamline or remove these processes from my to-do list each day.