Rewiring Hotel Tech for Humans
Mews founder Richard Valtr argues hospitality needs to embrace technology more, a point he made during this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast.
Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit and Head of Research Seth Borko talk travel every week.
Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit and Head of Research Seth Borko talk travel every week.
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This episode of the Skift Travel Podcast featured a discussion with Richard Valtr, founder of cloud-PMS provider Mews, which took place during the Mews Unfold conference in Amsterdam. Valtr talked with Head of Research Seth Borko about the company's vision and why hospitality undervalues technology.
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Five Key Points
Hotel Tech Is Burdened by Legacy Systems: Valtr explains that many of the entrenched problems in hotel tech stem from the early adoption of digital systems that were ahead of their time. These legacy systems, like those used in airlines (e.g., Sabre), became rigid and unable to adapt to modern needs. Mews aims to address these limitations by building more flexible and intuitive systems designed with hoteliers in mind.
Industry Standardization Needs to Evolve: While hotel brands have historically emphasized standardization to scale globally and ensure consistency, Valtr argues that today's technology enables personalization and richer guest experiences. Mews seeks to elevate industry norms by leveraging modern tools—like AI and automation—to recapture the personal touch once common in hospitality.
Modernizing Hospitality Employment and Operations: The industry needs to rethink traditional hospitality roles and working conditions — like long front desk shifts — and introduce more flexibility and automation in back-end operations. Leveraging automation can help reduce unnecessary labor while improving both employee well-being and operational efficiency.
Industry Resistance to Tech is Cultural, Not Logical: A persistent challenge in hospitality is a cultural reluctance to embrace technology, particularly among older leadership. The next generation of hoteliers is expected to drive more tech-forward, guest-centric operations by seeing tech as an enabler, not an obstacle.
The Future: Interoperability, Empathy, and AI: Technologies like computer vision and data-sharing (e.g., from platforms like Uber) can create truly personalized, seamless guest experiences. Mews envisions a future where tech augments human empathy—identifying guest moods or preferences on arrival—and blends invisible data flows into intuitive service that defines modern luxury.
Episode Summary
Borko and Valtr discussed the evolution of hotel technology. Valtr explained that the original vision behind Mews was to eliminate the impersonal and transactional nature of hotel check-ins by creating a more human-centric, tech-enabled guest experience.
Although Mews has grown into a Property Management System (PMS) that acts as a hotel's central nervous system, integrating booking, guest data, and operations, Valtr emphasized that Mews is more than a PMS. It's evolved into a guest management and profitability optimization platform.
Valtr also said that while standardization helped the hotel industry scale efficiently — enabling tasks like cleaning 100 rooms quickly — it should now serve as a foundation, not the goal. With modern technology, it's possible to return to a more personalized, 17th-century-style guest experience, once impossible due to technological limitations.
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