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About Postillion Hotels
The primary focus of Postillion Hotels is the meetings and events market. The group has three convention centres and numerous on-site meeting spaces across their seven properties, but they also welcome plenty of leisure tourism guests in addition to those lodging during events.
The group required a hospitality cloud that embraced automation to better handle the million conference guests that visit every year. It was high priority to provide a smoother check-in experience and allow the integration of a custom-built AI reservations bot.
Automated OTA booking processing
Pain
For every booking that came in via an OTA, a staff member had to amend the reservation details so that it would be accepted in their gateway portal. This also put a strain on the local servers, and if there was down time then booking details couldn’t be amended.
Solution
Using Mews, these processes are now automated, meaning that staff no longer have to manually enter and edit each OTA booking. OTAs account for 65% of all bookings, so this creates a huge time saving and eliminates the possibility of manual errors when amending the details.
Result
• Two hours saved every day
• Zero downtime with Mews’ cloud-servers
Faster, safer payment processing
Pain
Credit card bookings had to be manually processed by front desk or night shift staff, which with 250+ arrivals per day in some hotels, was very time-consuming. The payments were typically processed 48 hours before arrival, meaning if there was a problem with the card, there was very little time to resell the room.
Solution
Card payments are now automatically processed at the time of booking with Mews Payments. Any fraudulent bookings are now noticed immediately, meaning the rooms can be made available again to sell to real guests, improving occupancy. Moreover, if reservations are received via Booking.com and the guest’s card fails, Mews automatically reports this to the OTA and asks them to contact the guest.
Result
• Saved the equivalent of one full-time staff member per day
• 75% reduction in fraudulent bookings
• 100% payment automation in two hotels (which are also fully cashless)
“My biggest piece of advice is to look for a system that can adapt to fast technological change. From the beginning, Mews’ vision gave me the confidence that it’s agile enough to grow and adapt with this change.”
Making a good first impression
Pain
The reservation and the check-in process involved lots of manual work and took too long, negatively affecting the guest’s first impression.
Solution
Mews Operations has a user-friendly reservations dashboard where all the necessary information can be viewed and entered. Mews also allows for a diverse number of check-in methods, reducing queues and freeing up time for front desk staff to provide better, more meaningful service to all guests on arrival.
Result
• Manual booking time cut from 6 minutes to 3 minutes
• Online check-in increases check-in options
Mews helps us in pursuing our vision of hospitality because we want our front desk staff to make real connections with the guests and start having proper conversations with them.
Integration spotlight
Postillion Hotels use 10 integrations, from revenue management to meeting space management, and harnessed the power of Mews Open API.
Custom-built AI bot
Postillion Hotels integrated a specialized bot that can read emails, extract relevant information, create a booking and reply with a confirmation or proposal, in exactly the way a reservations agent would do. This is only possible because of Mews Open API, which gives hotels the power to implement their own technology.
Looking ahead
Postillion Hotels have already achieved notable success with Mews, particularly by improving online guest services such as check-in as well as group reservation processes. On the back of this, the group has ambitious plans to continue its expansion across The Netherlands, and to capture an even greater market share of MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) business.
