We operate a contactless hotel and are running into a recurring issue with last-minute bookings being assigned to dirty rooms in Mews.
We do not have every room cleaned daily, but we consistently have multiple clean and inspected rooms available to accommodate these bookings. The problem is that Mews does not provide an option to prioritize clean rooms during the assignment process. The only available options are top-down, bottom-up, or randomized, which results in guests occasionally being assigned to rooms that are not ready.
Given that room status (clean/inspected/dirty) is already tracked in the system, it seems like a basic requirement that last-minute bookings be assigned to a clean or inspected room by default.
This is creating operational issues for us and negatively impacting guest experience and reviews. Because we operate without a traditional front desk, we do not always have the ability to manually reassign rooms, especially for after-hours bookings.
To be clear, availability is not the issue. We have clean rooms. The system is simply not prioritizing them. How can we handle this? This seems like such a simple fix for Mews...
Best answer by adrianne.flores
Hi @Pam Nekvasil 😊
What you’re describing is a current limitation of how auto-assignment works in Mews today.
Automatic room assignment only looks at availability within the space category and then applies the chosen strategy (top-down, bottom-up, random, preferred features). It does not prioritize room status (Clean / Inspected / Dirty), so last-minute bookings can be assigned to a dirty room even when clean rooms are available.
There is currently no setting to automatically assign only clean or inspected rooms, so you’re not missing anything in the configuration.
While not perfect, these approaches reduce the risk:
Keep a small pool of rooms per category always Inspected for late arrivals.
Use assignment order (top-down/bottom-up) strategically if certain floors/rooms are usually kept ready.
Do a quick daily check of same-day arrivals and reassign any bookings linked to dirty rooms.
Ensure housekeeping updates room status in real time.
Given the rise of contactless operations, your use case is very valid and worth raising as a feature request in the Ideas section so Product can evaluate prioritizing Clean/Inspected rooms in future improvements.
What you’re describing is a current limitation of how auto-assignment works in Mews today.
Automatic room assignment only looks at availability within the space category and then applies the chosen strategy (top-down, bottom-up, random, preferred features). It does not prioritize room status (Clean / Inspected / Dirty), so last-minute bookings can be assigned to a dirty room even when clean rooms are available.
There is currently no setting to automatically assign only clean or inspected rooms, so you’re not missing anything in the configuration.
While not perfect, these approaches reduce the risk:
Keep a small pool of rooms per category always Inspected for late arrivals.
Use assignment order (top-down/bottom-up) strategically if certain floors/rooms are usually kept ready.
Do a quick daily check of same-day arrivals and reassign any bookings linked to dirty rooms.
Ensure housekeeping updates room status in real time.
Given the rise of contactless operations, your use case is very valid and worth raising as a feature request in the Ideas section so Product can evaluate prioritizing Clean/Inspected rooms in future improvements.
@adrianne.flores I understand this isn’t currently supported - I’ve already been told that by support a few times. I’m mostly raising it here because it feels like a pretty major gap, not just a missing setting.
For us, this is a major issue. If the system is assigning a dirty room to a guest who books last-minute or after hours we cannot catch it before the guest arrives. This is impacting the folks who are booking after 6pm, already tired and looking for an easy place to crash. They are extra upset when they arrive to find a dirty room.
We’re already doing all the suggested workarounds - holding inspected rooms, being intentional about assignment order, staying on top of housekeeping statuses - but none of that actually fixes the root problem. If someone books after hours, there’s still a real chance they get put into a dirty room even when clean ones are available.
That kind of defeats the entire purpose of being contactless...
It just seems like if room status already exists in the system, there should be a way to prioritize clean or inspected rooms for auto-assignment, especially for same-day bookings.
I’ll submit this as a feature request as well, but wanted to flag that this isn’t just a “nice to have” for us - it’s actively causing issues on the ground almost every week at this point (it is our busy season).
Thanks for sharing this context, it really helps highlight the real impact for contactless properties handling last-minute bookings.
Please feel free to include a link to this post when submitting the feature request, as examples like this help Product better understand the operational impact.
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