8 Common Pain Points of a Legacy PMS – and How to Solve Them
Running a hotel has never been easy. And the challenge is made even harder for those hoteliers who still rely on legacy property management systems (PMSs) that are no longer suited to modern habits, expectations and technologies. Systems that hinder rather than drive efficiency for your teams.
Enter Mews. The cloud-native PMS revolutionizes hotel management by eliminating outdated processes and bringing the benefits of a modern, connected technology to hoteliers.
In episode nine of Matt Talks, Mews CEO, Matt Welle, explores common pain points of legacy systems and how Mews simplifies operations to drive efficiency for staff and remarkable experiences for guests. Read on for some of the highlights or watch the video in full.
Pain Point 1: Night Audits
The challenge
Legacy PMSs require a nightly night audit to reset and close the day’s books, update charges and generate reports. This outdated process often means a night-shift employee must manually handle no-shows, cancellation fees and end-of-day reporting – adding hours of unnecessary work.
The Mews solution
A cloud-based PMS doesn’t require a night audit. With an infinitely scalable database, Mews can automatically cancel no-shows, apply cancellation fees, and keep billing and reporting data continuously updated in real time. This means less friction for hotel staff, fewer chances for errors, and an end to the nightly chore of administrative work. The upshot? More time for night staff to focus on guest needs and a better work-life balance.
Pain Point 2: Unsecure Payment Processing
The challenge
Legacy systems don’t offer even basic integrated payments, forcing hotel staff to manually process card payment details for bookings and often handle sensitive card data physically. This time-consuming process also increases the risk of errors and can leave guests waiting at the front desk.
The Mews solution
Mews offers category-leading embedded payments that streamline the entire process, allowing for automatic payment processing, tokenization and one-click billing for secure and efficient transactions. Front-desk staff can simply tap a button to charge or pre-authorize a guest's card, reducing manual entry errors and increasing security.
Pain Point 3: Limited Integrations and Rigid Reporting
The Challenge: Legacy platforms typically have challenging integration set-ups with third-party systems, creating closed networks that restrict the flexibility of data flows. Connecting to adjacent hospitality software can take months, cost a huge sum, and require specialist consultants. Hoteliers using these systems often find themselves manually verifying reservations or correcting data discrepancies, especially when integrations don’t function correctly.
The Mews Solution: Mews is an open, API-enabled platform, making integration with other tools seamless. With data synchronization available across countless two-way connections, Mews ensures that data flows smoothly across systems like revenue management, accounting and housekeeping. That means fewer mistakes and no need for repetitive data entry. This ensures that accounting reports and reservation data match across all systems, creating a dependable source of truth for the entire operation.
Pain Point 4: Outdated Interfaces and Lengthy Staff Training
The Challenge
With interfaces dating back decades, legacy systems are not intuitive for today’s workforce, leading to a long training period for new employees. It can take weeks for staff to become proficient, creating onboarding challenges and slowing down operational efficiency.
The Mews Solution
Mews has a modern, user-friendly interface that’s intuitive and easy to navigate, allowing new hires to start confidently from day one. With Mews University, new employees receive role-specific training through an interactive e-learning platform that includes videos, certification and optional live sessions. This enables receptionists, housekeepers and other staff to get up to speed quickly, reducing training time and lowering support requests.
Pain Point 5: Inflexible Operations
The Challenge
Legacy systems often restrict check-in and check-out to fixed stations due to a lack of mobile capabilities, creating bottlenecks at reception and preventing a smooth guest flow.
The Mews Solution
Online check-in means guests can easily check in ahead of time to help cut queues. Alternatively, a modern, mobile-friendly interface means that staff can provide seamless check-ins from a tablet or smartphone from anywhere onsite. So instead of being stuck behind a big screen at a reception desk, this important interaction can take place on a lobby sofa or a lounge armchair.
Pain Point 6: Cumbersome Housekeeping
The Challenge
Traditional housekeeping relies on printed lists and face-to-face updates, resulting in inefficiency and frequent guest disruptions.
The Mews Solution
Mews offers a dedicated housekeeping app that provides real-time room status updates and enables team members to work directly from their smartphones. Housekeepers can instantly see which rooms are vacant or occupied, add maintenance notes and mark rooms as ready, all without leaving their station. This level of real-time communication significantly boosts productivity and reduces errors.
Pain Point 7: System Downtime and Data Loss
The Challenge
Legacy systems are often dependent on local servers, which can fail due to power outages, resulting in costly downtimes and data recovery expenses.
The Mews Solution
With Mews, all data is securely stored in the cloud, eliminating the need for on-site servers and ensuring 99.9% uptime. Hoteliers don’t have to worry about sudden system failures, costly IT interventions, or disruptions to guest services, freeing up resources for more impactful areas of the business.
Pain Point 8: Fragmented and Inaccurate Data
The Challenge
Data silos in legacy systems often lead to discrepancies between different reports, forcing hoteliers to reconcile data across platforms manually.
The Mews Solution
Mews delivers unified, accurate data across all hotel functions. From reservations to revenue management to housekeeping, Mews APIs ensure that all departments operate from a single source of truth. This accuracy not only simplifies reporting but also helps decision-making, giving hotel managers confidence in their data and enabling them to focus on growth and guest satisfaction.
IDC study on Mews efficiency
The pain points of legacy hotel systems have long hindered the hospitality industry, weighing down hotel staff with unnecessary manual work, outdated interfaces, and limited flexibility. Mews addresses these challenges head-on, providing a cloud-based, integrated, and user-friendly PMS that streamlines operations, improves employee productivity and enriches guest experiences.
So exactly what kind of efficiency gains can you expect if you move to move? An IDC Business Value White Paper, commissioned by Mews, explores some of the key areas that hoteliers can expect to benefit from, including 24% more efficient front-desk staff and a 31% decrease in human error.
That’s on top of a huge 290% three-year ROI. Read the full report, The Business Value of Mews Hospitality Cloud with Mews Payments, to learn more.
About Mews
Mews is the leading platform for the new era of hospitality. Powering over 5,500 customers across more than 85 countries, Mews Hospitality Cloud is designed to streamline operations for modern hoteliers, transform the guest experience and create more profitable businesses. Customers include BWH Hotels, Strawberry, The Social Hub and Airelles Collection. Mews was named Best PMS (2024) and listed among the Best Places to Work in Hotel Tech (2021, 2022, 2024) by Hotel Tech Report, as well as World's Best Hotel PMS Provider (2023) and World's Best Independent Hotel PMS Provider (2022, 2023, 2024) by World Travel Tech Awards. Mews won the Top 250 Golden Scaler Award in 2024, given to the fastest growing company in the Netherlands, and most recently, was awarded the Tech Hero 2024 Award at CIODAY. Mews has raised $335 million from investors including Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Kinnevik and Revaia to transform hospitality.
