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We use MEWS Payments as as payment processor and we use Siteminder’s Booking Engine - Direct Book as our Booking Engine.  The issue is that Siteminder only payment form only acts as a ‘payment window’ to collect card details but doesn't actually action the payment or as you would expect connect to MEWS Payments to process the payment during the booking process.
We have spoken to Siteminder and their response is it is up to us to do manually.  Once the bookiing comes through MEWS Payments automatically processes payments which is fine, the issue is that the Siteminder Payment Window will accept any card and process and confirm bookings using the card that is entered, meaning that invalid and expired cards can be entered and  booking confirmation issuesd.  Leaving our Front of House with an admin and payment headache.  
Surely Siteminder’s payment window should just connect to MEWS Payments at the point of sale?
We have spoken to Siteminder and their response was to try to sell us into using their payment processors Siteminder Pay which we don’t want to do.
Any help from MEWS Payments team or other hoteliers using both MEWS Payments and Siteminder booking engine would be much appreciated.  Thank you very much

Hello!

This works as expected… there is no chance you can integrate Mews Payment with your external siteminder booking engine. It‘s best to make a good deal with siteminder - maybe you can get better payment conditions than with mews ;-)

Just make sure that siteminder will send the reservations with the paid amount marked as such. We do this with D-Edge - we have mapped those payments as external payment „Online Payment“ in mews, so that we know those are externally settled …

Best regards,

jp.

​@Georgina F Just out of curiosity, why aren’t you using the Mews Booking Engine? I think it’s pretty well made. 

Hello!

This works as expected… there is no chance you can integrate Mews Payment with your external siteminder booking engine. It‘s best to make a good deal with siteminder - maybe you can get better payment conditions than with mews ;-)

Just make sure that siteminder will send the reservations with the paid amount marked as such. We do this with D-Edge - we have mapped those payments as external payment „Online Payment“ in mews, so that we know those are externally settled …

Best regards,

jp.

Thank you very much jp, this is really helpful and we really appreciate your quick reply.  That is great to hear we can map payments as external payments to record in MEWS, that will be very helpful.  Thank you again

​@Georgina F Just out of curiosity, why aren’t you using the Mews Booking Engine? I think it’s pretty well made. 

Hi ​@Georg Gaag Thank you for your message.  Yes, very good question!  We would much prefer to use the MEWS booking engine as it would make everything much easier, but we found that the front end functionality was not so strong.  For example it does not display restrictions -e.g. where there is a 2 night minimum stay it just displays as no availability rather than displaying an alert message, also the date finder has a ‘dead end’, ie if a guest inputs a date without availablity it does not show alternative options for different units or dates leading to lost sales or more emails or calls.  
If this could be improved or there is a way of configuring the MEWS booking engine to bring in greater guests functionality we will definintely use it!  So any insight you have on your positive experience woudl be wonderful to hear?
Thank you so much!

Hello Everyone! My name is Dani and I am a member of Community Ambassadors, I am happy to jump in to this question :)

In the above scenario from Georgina, it may be technically possible to set this up via a custom API integration. However, this redirection flow is not widely used because of several significant limitations:

  • The user experience is less friendly due to guests being redirected to a Mews-branded page, which may cause friction or lead to a loss of trust in the booking process.

  • Some payment methods (such as wallets) may not be supported in this flow.

  • There is limited or no capability for storing payment methods for future use, reducing flexibility.

  • The process is only available in countries supported by Mews Payments (based on providers like Stripe Connect or Adyen MP).

Mews is planning improvements (such as an embedded payment experience via SDKs) to allow more seamless and customizable payments from third-party booking engines, but these enhancements are not yet available.

So it important to note this method is limited and not recommended as best practice.

That being said, if your property is on the Enterprise tier, it may be worth exploring the option of utilizing the Booking Engine API for your booking engine. This solution allows maximum flexibility with customization potential but does requires significant technical development. 

If this is a solution you might want to explore, you can review our Booking Engine API documentation located here.

 

I hope this information was helpful!

Hello Everyone! My name is Dani and I am a member of Community Ambassadors, I am happy to jump in to this question :)

In the above scenario from Georgina, it may be technically possible to set this up via a custom API integration. However, this redirection flow is not widely used because of several significant limitations:

  • The user experience is less friendly due to guests being redirected to a Mews-branded page, which may cause friction or lead to a loss of trust in the booking process.

  • Some payment methods (such as wallets) may not be supported in this flow.

  • There is limited or no capability for storing payment methods for future use, reducing flexibility.

  • The process is only available in countries supported by Mews Payments (based on providers like Stripe Connect or Adyen MP).

Mews is planning improvements (such as an embedded payment experience via SDKs) to allow more seamless and customizable payments from third-party booking engines, but these enhancements are not yet available.

So it important to note this method is limited and not recommended as best practice.

That being said, if your property is on the Enterprise tier, it may be worth exploring the option of utilizing the Booking Engine API for your booking engine. This solution allows maximum flexibility with customization potential but does requires significant technical development. 

If this is a solution you might want to explore, you can review our Booking Engine API documentation located here.

 

I hope this information was helpful!

Hi Dani, thank you very much, that is interesting on the Booking Engine API.  Please coudl you ask someone from MEWS to reach out to discuss an upgrade for us.  Thank you

Hi ​@Georgina F 

Thank you so much for reaching out to our wonderful community. I hope you got all the information you needed? Just in case I will follow up with an email today.

Thanks 

Charlotte! 

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