Changed Checkin / Invisible Companions

@Olivia.Dingreville maybe you could help us with that?

Hey,
we are using Straiv for this. Because as a leisure hotel we really need the information from all guests. But this extra service has also extra costs. If MEWS would implement a similar version we would also be happy.

@jones.eth sorry for the late reply on this. Indeed there has been a recent change on collecting companion details for German properties.

To give you a bit more context, today this is something that is set up at the country level for Germany. A few months back we rolled out a change to collect companions details which worked well for some properties but impacted a lot of properties negatively. The feedback was very mixed with no clear best approach and the team decided to roll back the change for now. We understand the communication has been poor on this and is something we’ve taken up internally. 

We want to continue to improve this flow and as you mention we are exploring how we could give properties more flexibility to decide whether they want to collect companion details and which details to collect. It’s something that’s definitely on our plate but we don’t have a timeline to share for now.

Thank you both for raising it here, your feedback is super insightful to understand the impact this will have and feed into our planning.

@Olivia.Dingreville thanks for the feedback and clearing that up.

For us the recent changes destroyed the digital workflow and also made the hardware we bought for the kiosks useless. Our reception switched to analog guest files again to be able to handle that.

In addition to that, as discussed in this post, a legally correct operation is not longer possible with mews right now, except you already have a third party service for the checkin. This puts us under pressure as we have relied on mews so far.

It would be great if the planned changes were given a higher priority, but until then it would be a massive help, if there is just a setting to include companions in checkin again. I would guess that this is a lot less work for you as this is already stable so you just have to add the setting and condition.

@Olivia.Dingreville There is a legal requierement in providing certain information within the PMS environment. 

Mews is currently not providing this necessary service and this should be fixed as soon as possible. Refering to optional third party providers wasn´t party of the contract in the very first place. Please advise when we can expect the necessary changes.

For reference:

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/beherbstatg_2003/BJNR164200002.html#:~:text=(1)%20Beherbergungsbetriebe%20im%20Sinne%20des,mindestens%20zehn%20Stellpl%C3%A4tze%20vorhanden%20sein.

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bmg/__29.html

https://stadt.gluecksburg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/download/ortsrecht/Lesefassung_Kurabgabesatzung_inkl._VIII._Nachtragssatzung_v._20.12.2023.pdf

I am seriously wondering and worried about how such a huge company like Mews can be so unprepared for an entire german market and depended on hoteliers for certain information...

Yeah same here from our municipality. See § 7 (2):

Wer Personen gegen Entgelt beherbergt, einen Campingplatz betreibt oder seine Wohnung als Ferienwohnung ortsfremden Personen gegen Entgelt zur Verfügung stellt, ist verpflichtet, bei ihm verweilende Personen innerhalb von 3 Tagen nach Ankunft bzw. Abreise an- bzw. abzumelden.

Anyone who accommodates people for a fee, operates a campsite or makes their home available as a holiday home to non-local people for a fee is obliged to register or deregister people staying with them within three days of their arrival or departure.