Here’s the problem. Most of us still imagine a hotel lobby with a counter, a queue and someone typing furiously while we wait after a long flight. In this episode, I sit down with Richard Valtr, founder of Mews, to ask if that scene is quietly fading away. Backed by Tiger Global, Goldman Sachs and Battery Ventures, Mews recently raised $75 million to scale an AI-powered platform that already processes more than $10 billion in payments per year. Richard states that the real bottleneck in the hospitality industry is not the software. It’s mentality. If hotels rethought workflows around guests instead of systems, the front desk would feel less like a checkpoint and more like a welcome.
Richard shares the origin story of construction for both hoteliers and guests, and why the property management system should function like a central nervous system. He explains how the automation handles the repetitive actions of check-in so that staff can actually look people in the eye and start a conversation. That’s the promise of AI here. No gimmicks, but orchestration of bookings, payments, inventory and service, so that the boring parts fade into the background and the human parts come to the fore.
We’re also talking about underutilized technology. Richard uses a memorable analogy for many hotel rigs that have Ferrari-level capabilities but are driven like Volvos. The data is there. The intention to serve is there. What’s missing is the leadership’s confidence to rewire the deck, measure the results, and keep pushing. When that happens, hotels stop thinking just in terms of rooms and start monetizing the entire trip. Sunbeds, coworking passes, last-mile upgrades, spa time after back-to-back meetings. AI can bring the right offer to the table at the right time without turning the experience into a sales pitch.
Towards the end, Richard paints a picture of hospitality where screens fade, transactions take place on the guest’s time, and every interaction feels more personal precisely because the admin is out of the way. If you want an informed view of how AI will change hotels without taking away the reason we love staying there, this conversation is a useful starting point.
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