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About Palmers Lodge
Palmers Lodge is an independent chain of two hostels in central London has been a Mews customers since 2018. With 40,000 guests and backpackers each year, the hostels' pride themselves on offering a boutique experience.
One of the hostels’ great strengths is the ability to react quickly and implement changes very rapidly. Amongst the most important factors for choosing Mews as their PMS was: effective payment processing, flexible revenue management, and more time to engage with guests.
Automation frees up time to focus on guests
Pain
Receptionists at Palmers Lodge were struggling to provide good hospitality, not because they weren’t capable, but because too much of their time had to be spent on transactional questions and tasks.
Solution
Mews has enabled Palmers Lodge to automate many manual tasks and staff can now properly engage with guests and build a rapport. Genuine connections are created and team members often stay for drinks with guests at the end of shifts fostering a lively, positive culture for the hostel.
Result
• Faster for staff to make changes to reservations
• Increased face-to-face time with guests
• 16hrs per week saved thanks to payment automation
• 12% of guests check in online
Mews prompts business-wide culture change
Pain
Staff at Palmers Lodge had a mentality of 'that's just the way it is' when it came to using technology in each of the properties. Their hands felt tied about process improvements and manual tasks.
Solution
Across the Palmers Lodge team, they've adopted the Mews philosophy of looking at everything differently. The business no disregards existing methods and interrogates problems to find an effective solution, creating an environment of continuous improvement.
Result
• A complete culture change
• A feeling that the possibilities are endless
• Staff can focus on guests, not admin
"One thing I really like is how embedded Mews is within the community itself. Rather than being a provider for the industry you are part of the industry – part of hospitality. A large majority of your staff come from hostels or hotels and really understand us, having been in our shoes."
Integration spotlight
Palmers Lodge uses 15 integrations, from upselling to personalized guides for guests.
QuickBooks
QuickBooks is an accounting integration that sends real-time data from Mews to QuickBooks. This allows their Finance Controller to run financial reports and control accounting through a platform that’s already familiar to him, with no need to learn anything new.
"There’s a misconception that Mews is going to automate everything, that it's going to take away from the customer experience. But I think it enhances it."
Looking ahead
Through the use of Mews, Palmers Lodge has been able to maximize revenue across the entire business. In addition, removing manual and time-consuming tasks away from staff members has unlocked a renewed sense of energy and purpose to the team who now believe the possibilities are endless when it comes to optimizing both how they work, and how the business operates.
In the future, Palmers Lodge will look to leverage more integrations, understand how to streamline more processes to free up time, and become more insights-driven with the data they now have at their finger tips.
