What would your ideal booking flow in Mews look like?

​@corentin.josse, i guess manus went offline ;)

​@mauritsbots, thanks for catching. The Configurator demo is already back up to explore. Look forward to hearing what you think. Thanks!

Hello ​@corentin.josse ,

It looks very good and easy to set up. At the moment, we are only using the Mews booking engine for limited availability blocks due to certain functional limitations, so I have a few questions:

1. Is there support for a multi-property page? For example, can we display all hotels in the portfolio on the first page, allowing guests to choose which hotel to book? Additionally, is it possible to group hotels - for instance, showing only properties in City X, City Y, or by brand?
2. Mews has some limitations when it comes to building packages, particularly regarding charging options on distributed rates (products must be set as nightly or per person/night). How would we be able to offer packages that include products charged “once” in the booking engine?
3. Is it possible to restrict certain products (add-ons) to specific rates or space categories?
4. I assume all communication is sent from Mews, but is it also possible to connect a CRM?
5. How to handle Loyalty Member rates? 

​@Robin Gustavsson. Happy to jump in here for ​@corentin.josse.

1. Multi-property: Yes, this works well for portfolio setups. We can add a location selector on the first page, and with a small addition we can also group properties by city or brand. If a guest is arriving from a specific location page on your marketing site, you can link directly to that property's flow rather than the selector.

2. Packages with once-charged products: This is done regularly for retreat centers. The most common approach is to create a segment in Mews and set up product rules against it. For a package that includes things like a taxi transfer and daily breakfast, you attach the transfer as a one-time charge and breakfast as a nightly product. The Custom Booking Engine then displays the correct rates and products based on the selected package, mapping it to the right segment behind the scenes. For retreats this can also be tied to a specific date range. For packages more generally, we can add logic to surface the right options based on what the guest has selected.

3. Product restrictions by rate or space category: Yes. We can build a filter into the booking engine that shows or hides specific add-ons based on the selected rate group or space category.

4. CRM connection: Guest communications, confirmations, and transactional emails continue to run through Mews as normal. The Custom Booking Engine can additionally pass reservation and guest data to your CRM to trigger marketing or nurture campaigns from there. We are fully integrated with HubSpot right now. Other CRMs are possible depending on the setup, happy to discuss if you are using something else.

5. Loyalty rates: This depends on how the loyalty program is structured and what tools are involved. I would need a bit more detail to give you a proper answer on that one.

If any of these warrant a deeper conversation, feel free to send me a DM.

Hello ​@MichaelCoussement , 

Thank you very much for your answers. 

Answer to point 2:
For us, having 50 hotels - each with different packages that are regularly updated - means that creating a separate segment for each package is not optimal. Since Mews has the limitation of not being able to send products that are charged once via the channel manager integrations, we instead only send the rate (excluding products) to the CRS. There, we build the package, add text and images, and define which products should be included - along with their correct charging type, such as “once.”

Answer to point 4:
A simple loyalty program that requires customers to sign up or log in as members to access special rates
 

I’ll discuss this internally and then reach out to you directly via DM.
Will you be at Unfold next month?

@Robin Gustavsson. I understand that requires a different approach. The way we could solve this is to have package definitions live in the CBE rather than in Mews. Rather than relying on Mews segments for each package variation, the CBE would hold the package definitions, including descriptions, images, included products, and their charging types. When a guest selects a package, the CBE applies the correct rate and products via the Mews API at the point of reservation creation. Since that happens through the API and not through the channel manager connection, the “once” charging limitation doesn’t apply.

For a portfolio of 50 properties with packages that change regularly, that would mean managing package content in one place rather than replicating configurations across Mews and your CRS.

I will not be at Unfold, but my business partner likely will be. Send me a DM and we can connect. 

​@MichaelCoussement  is that a feature which will be included or a sperate option? Saw the info on the back end--- for the rate---

is there an option for a rate be shown on the calendar for example from 100 EUR on

It looks quite cool to be honest for our small 5 hotel chain :-)

​@Johannes Rott Which feature do you mean exactly? 

And yes, there is an option to show prices on the calendar. Best to go over your specific use case on a quick call. I’ll reach out to you directly.