The Skift Travel Podcast Rewiring Hotel Tech for Humans
Seth Borko sat down with Richard Valtr, founder of cloud-PMS provider Mews, during the Mews Unfold conference in Amsterdam. Valtr explains this company's long-standing vision: strip away check-in bureaucracy so staff can greet guests as people, not reservations – a problem that still demands modern tech such as AI, computer vision and open APIs. He traces the company’s 13-year path from “just” building a PMS to a broader guest- and profit-management platform, describes competing with legacy giants (the real foe is hotel inertia), and discusses how recent funding and acquisitions will speed adoption.
The pair range into bigger topics, like why hospitality undervalues technology, the promise of voice agents and AR, the over-hype of blockchain IDs, and how rising labor costs and brand mergers and acquisitions (e.g., Marriott/CitizenM, Sabre’s SynXis spin-off) create urgency for smarter systems. They close with Valtr’s passion for historical travel, linking tech-enabled experiences to the timeless allure of place.
- Human-first vision: Mews aims to make hotel arrivals conversational by automating identity, payment and room assignment in the background.
- From PMS to platform: The company is shifting from “property-” to “profit-management,” fusing CRS, CRM, revenue and upsell tools in one open ecosystem.
- Legacy lock-in: On-premise systems still run ~95 % of hotels; the biggest competitor is operators’ fear of ripping them out, not Oracle or Sabre.
- AI everywhere: Valtr sees computer vision, large-language models and voice agents stitching together guest data so staff can personalize service in real time.
- Open beats closed: He argues hotels must be free to mix best-of-breed apps; vendors that wall off data will lose.
- Funding as validation: Mews' recent $75 million round backs continued M&A—less for “asset accumulation,” more to migrate more hotels faster.
- Labor economics: Automation is no longer optional when Amazon warehouse wages outpace hotel front-desk pay.
- Trends he buys and bins: Excited about voice-AI agents and mixed-context processing; skeptical that blockchain ID alone solves anything.
- Experiential future: AR could turn stays into “immersive movies,” letting travelers time-travel through historic sites—echoing Valtr’s own battlefield-tour hobby.
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