At Mews, we’ve always believed in the value of our innovative, modern and simple yet powerful platform, and we have loads of testimonials from our customers to back us up. But sometimes it’s good to hear it from a third party. We commissioned IDC to talk to our customers about the value they get from Mews – specifically the value add of the automation and benefits provided by our embedded payments platform, Mews Payments. We were happy to see, we weren’t wrong. Their report, The Business Value of Mews Hospitality Cloud with Mews Payments, offers a quantitative and qualitative overview of their findings.
Among their findings: 24% increase in efficiency for front desk staff, 23% overall staff productivity improvement, 35% more time spent with customers, and 7.3% increase in ADR.
The Changing Face of Hospitality Management
Let’s take a step back and talk about why the business value of a hospitality platform is so important.
Between the impact of COVID, the change in business travel, the rise in digital nomads, and the challenges with staffing, the hospitality sector has had to pivot quickly and technology is the key to a rapid response. Today, all eyes – or at least the eyes of smart, future-focused hoteliers – are on technology that can unlock more revenue and, at the same time, give staff more time to focus on guests.
According to previous research by IDC, 50% of hotels surveyed in July 2023 highlighted the importance of developing new revenue monetization opportunities through digital innovation initiatives. Source: IDC’s Global Retail Survey, July 2023; hospitality n=120. Given that many legacy property management systems struggle with outdated functionalities and complex integrations, hoteliers are seeking a modern, integrated and intuitive solution – a solution like Mews and Mews Payments.
Mews Hospitality Cloud + Mews Payments: A complete solution
Mews Hospitality Cloud is a cloud-native, serverless, multi-tenant SaaS platform that allows hoteliers to operate with complete mobility and minimal downtime. Across the entire ecosystem is Mews Payments. It automates manual tasks seamlessly, helping to drive additional revenue, reduce manual errors, and enhance security through card tokenization.
Business Benefits of Mews – by the numbers
24% increase in front-desk staff efficiency
One of the most significant benefits uncovered in the IDC white paper is the impact of Mews on efficiency at the front desk – often the first point of contact and the first chance to make a good impression on guests. The analysis of the customers interviewed showed that by automating repetitive tasks, they can see a 24% increase in productivity for their front desk staff. For hotels groups, this can be the equivalent workload of around 12 FTEs for the organization. This time savings lets staff focus more on guest interactions and improving overall customer experience.
"For each guest, front-desk staff saves at least 5 minutes a day on administration, which gives them more time to spend on customer experience. The automation is so important. All the repetitive tasks are now done by Mews and frees our employees to talk to and help our guests," said one property interviewed by IDC.
Revenue Growth and Cost Savings
Efficiency is great, but we all know that, for a business to grow, it needs to uncover new ways to boost revenue. One key metric in this arena is ADR (average daily rate).
According to the IDC analysis of customers that range from independent hotels to groups of 15 properties, on average, organizations using Mews experience a 7.3% increase in ADR, which amounts to approximately €272,000 in additional annual revenue. On the other side of the coin is cost savings, where Mews Payments also shines, helping hotels to save more than €100,000 a year on booking engine fees as well as a major reduction in revenue loss from guest no-shows. Moreover, Mews Payments facilitates upsell and cross-sell opportunities, further boosting revenue.
Streamlined Payments
As an embedded part of Mews Hospitality Cloud, Mews Payments makes just about everything related to payments seamless for both guests and staff. By automating payment processes and reducing the need for multiple payment providers, not only is managing finances but the risk of errors is significantly reduced and security is increased. With Mews, hotels can pre-authorize and charge credit cards before guest arrival, reducing no-show rates and ensuring smoother check-ins.
"There is no need to manually input numbers on the payment terminal anymore. With Mews, we can take pre-authorization in advance before guests arrive or charge credit cards in advance. All these tasks were done manually before the implementation of Mews," according to a Mews customer.
The business value of Mews, as reported by the IDC white paper, doesn’t stop with those exciting findings. From ease of use to greater platform stability, the analysis found that Mews customers came to Mews with some business needs that mirror those of many other hoteliers – from individual properties to groups of 15 properties – and the value that realized met and exceeded their expectations.
Download the full report to see what else customers experienced and said about the power of Mews and Mews Payments in transforming their operations, revenue generation and guest (and staff) experience.
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