Hotel Tech & AI Deep Dive With Mews Founder Richard Valtr [Sponsor Bonus]

In this episode, Mews founder Richard Valtr shares a practical look at how AI is reshaping hotel operations, guest experience, and revenue strategy. The conversation focuses on why hoteliers should design the guest journey first, then apply technology to scale it—along with concrete ideas for monetizing beyond rooms and preparing teams for what’s coming next in hospitality tech.

Resources:

• Our previous conversation with Richard: Hospitality is 'eating the world' - here's what it means for your business and your career
• Behind the Stays podcast: How He Built Mews — And Rewired the Modern Hotel Stay
• Skift podcast: Rewiring Hotel Tech for Humans
• Modern Hotelier podcast: Helping Hoteliers Monetize the Full 24 Experience
• Book a demo with Mews

Chapters: 

• 00:02:16 What does Mews do?
• 00:03:28 What is a PMS?
• 00:05:42 The 3 assets in a hotel business
• 00:08:01 Monetization opportunities
• 00:14:19 Opportunities without admin work
• 00:15:44 Experiment: Building customer archetypes with AI
• 00:21:49 "Red teaming" to "destroy" the company
• 00:24:38 Agentic hospitality
• 00:25:55 Future: Mesh of AI-assisted work
• 00:27:13 LLMs as middleware
• 00:29:35 Misconceptions
• 00:31:54 The first thing you need to do
• 00:33:30 AI needs the truth
• 00:35:38 Speeding up training content creation
• 00:36:36 Where to start with using AI
• 00:41:36 Advice for finding technology partners
• 00:42:26 What Richard is proud of at Mews now

This is a special sponsor bonus episode, sponsored by Mews.

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If you found this episode interesting or helpful, send it to someone on your team so you can turn the ideas into action and benefit your business and the people you serve!

Music for this show is produced by Clay Bassford of Bespoke Sound: Music Identity Design for Hospitality Brands