Explore every episode of the podcast Matt Talks Hospitality: Real conversations for innovative hoteliers

Choice Hotels is built around the idea that a franchisee is in business for themselves but never alone in it. That premise shaped the company that grew into one of the largest franchisors in hospitality. Raul Ramirez, Chief Segment and International Operations Officer at Choice Hotels International, tells Matt how technology supports that premise, and why he believes the next battle for hotels will be fought over distribution.

As Matt Talks Hospitality celebrates 2 years and 100 episodes, Mews CEO Matt Welle reflects on what all these conversations have taught him about innovative hospitality. He revisits his favorite stories of hoteliers who defy gravity and dare to do something different, and explores what drives their success. Matt also looks at the technology behind these hotels and the freedom it gives hoteliers to build the concept that sets them apart.

Hospitality is still working out its relationship with AI, embracing it where it saves time and holding back where it touches the guest. Catherina Gioino, a News Editor at Fortune covering AI and technology, brings an outside read on where that technology helps and where it falls short. She joins Matt for a view on where the industry stands and what AI is doing to the way people find, book and experience a hotel.

Can your staff keep up with guest messages and requests? Most hotels would say no. Messages scatter across five or six apps, and by the time someone replies, the guest has moved on. Guest Messaging and Automations, two new AI-powered Mews features, intend to fix that. Adam Britton, Director of Product and Engineering at Mews, joins Matt to explain how.

Digital room keys are increasingly replacing the classic physical keycard, with more hotels handing guests a key that lives in their phone wallet instead of a piece of plastic at the desk. Mews and Vingcard, an ASSA ABLOY company, are part of that shift, having launched a partnership to offer native wallet-based room access. Tess Mattisson, Vice President and Head of Product for Hospitality at ASSA ABLOY, joins Matt to talk about the partnership, the tech behind wallet-based keys and the future of hotel locks.

Every hospitality startup pitches a similar story: better tech, faster growth, bigger returns. Someone has to decide which ones are worth the check. On this episode, Matt is joined by Chris Hemmeter, Managing Partner at Thayer Investment Partners. They talk about how venture capital finds and funds the future of hospitality tech: what convinces investors, what makes a business worth the investment risk, and where the smart money thinks this industry goes next.

Wellness is one of the fastest-growing categories in hospitality, and for a lot of properties it has moved from a nice-to-have into a real part of how the business makes money. Steve Porter, Co-founder of Trybe, has spent years building software for exactly that part of the hotel. Steve and Matt talk about why guests now book the spa before the room, what makes it the most complex system in a hotel to run and how wellness is redefining hospitality.

Every hotel used to fight for a guest's attention on Google. Now guests are asking ChatGPT where to stay, what to book, even what to buy once they get to the room. That shift changes hospitality. Gilad Berenstein founded Utrip, the world's first AI travel company, which helped 225 million travelers plan trips before it sold. He now runs Brook Bay Capital, investing in AI across travel and hospitality. Gilad joins Matt to talk about the AI use cases property owners can already try as agentic AI takes hold.

Matt Marrs owns Cactus Cove Inn & Suites in Amarillo and operates a portfolio of hotels, RV parks and short-term rentals across Texas. He migrated his properties to Mews this spring, went live during peak season and signed up for every beta feature available before onboarding was done. In this episode, the two Matts talk about what drove that decision, how to think about tech across three different asset types and what it means to be an operator helping shape hotel software from the inside.

Buying a new property management system is one of the biggest decisions a hotelier can make, and most of them will tell you the process is painful. Tommy Kalita has been on both sides of that process. Before joining sales and then fintech solutions at Mews, he ran his own hotel in Edmonton, Canada. In this episode, Tommy and Matt talk about what hoteliers often overlook during the RFP process, who should be involved in the decision beyond leadership and what changes for a property once a new system goes live.

SiteMinder's distribution engine, the largest in the world, is now being built natively into Mews. Availability, rates, inventory and other content are now handled in one place: Mews Channel Manager, powered by SiteMinder. This closes the gap that hotels have had to bridge manually between two systems. Leah Rankin of SiteMinder joins Matt to talk about what this partnership changes for hoteliers, how hotels should think about their channel strategy, and where AI is taking distribution next.

Mews has just been granted an Electronic Money Institution license from De Nederlandsche Bank, making it the first vertical hospitality operating system in the European Economic Area to hold one. Matt talks to Maximilian Lehmann, CEO of Mews Financial Services, the regulated subsidiary of Mews that holds the license, about what it is, why Mews pursued it, and what it can open up for hoteliers and the hospitality industry.

Guest data is the most underused asset in most hotels. It sits fragmented across the PMS, the OTA, the spa system and a dozen other touchpoints, and most of it never gets acted on. In this episode, Matt puts the spotlight on three CRM solutions from the Mews Marketplace that are tackling exactly that problem. Hear Daan de Bruijn, co-founder of Bookboost, Bryson Koehler, CEO of Revinate, and Benjamin Devisme, Senior Problem Solver at Quinta (previously Quicktext), talk about turning data into direct bookings and stronger guest relationships.

When you deploy tech the right way, it makes you more revenue, more money. That's hard to prove, since a hotel changes more than one thing at once. Today we bring the data. Mews ran one of its most rigorous studies, across over 6,000 hotels, isolating one system, Mews RMS. What happens when a hotel deploys it, and switches on autopilot? Richard Smithies, Director of Data, led the study. Conor Winders, VP of Product and Engineering, built the product. They’re here to take you through the tech and the data showing a 13% revenue uplift in hotels using the Mews RMS autopilot pricing feature.

What if the room was the least interesting thing about your hotel? Jim Deters looked at a ski town in Colorado and decided to build something else entirely: a tribe. He is the founder and CEO of Gravity Haus, an adventure lifestyle hotel and membership club with properties across the Rocky Mountain West. Jim's a tech entrepreneur turned accidental hotelier, and someone who gives his general managers stock options, which tells you everything you need to know about how differently he thinks. Jim joins Matt to talk about the membership model, the tech stack, and how he's built something that guests are willing to pay for twice: once for the room, and once to belong.

Have lifestyle hotels gotten worse? Eric Jafari has built hospitality companies from the ground up across Europe, multiple times over. He co-founded Locke, edyn and Birch, led a £1.5bn pan-European development platform, and is now building AENDRE, a platform that acquires, develops and operates wellness and lifestyle hospitality brands. Eric and Matt get into the problem with lifestyle hotels, what it takes to raise capital for something disruptive, and what the next generation of hospitality looks like.

Up until a few years ago, Cole Rubin managed a $19 million residential portfolio of around 200 properties across Airbnb and Booking.com. He lived the midnight guest messages, the missed calls, the inbox chaos. That firsthand pain led him to build Conduit, an AI agent platform for hospitality. Guest requesting a late checkout? An agent checks availability, takes payment and updates the cleaning team, all without a human in the loop. Cole joins Matt to talk late checkouts, AI agents and the future of hotel guest communication.

How should small hotels think about building and investing in a tech stack when they don’t have the data, the team size or the budget of large properties? Elise Roberts is the Managing Director of Happiness Hospitality, the operator behind The Gallivant, a beautiful boutique coastal hotel in East Sussex that holds a MICHELIN key and VisitEngland's Small Hotel of the Year. Elise joins Matt to talk about why 18 systems are not too many for a small hotel, what every hotelier should ask before buying software and how independent properties can outrun the big chains.

Why can you order an Uber within seconds but booking a hotel room still feels like filing a tax return? That is the question Frédéric Robles could not let go of. A tech and antitrust lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and Amazon, he walked away from law in 2021 to build Namastay, a modern booking engine now live in over 400 hotels across 42 countries. He joins Matt to talk about why most hotels are stuck below 15 percent of direct bookings, and how payment optimization, including digital wallets like Apple Pay, can shift that number.

Hotel gyms. A dead space or a great investment? Matt talks to two experts with opposing views to settle the debate. Lou Zameryka, Global Head of Hotel Enterprise and Connectivity Partnerships at Airbnb, has worked at Booking.com for 17 years and has spent his career at the intersection of travel and wellness. He says hotels are sitting on an opportunity they can't see. Borivoj Vokrinek is Strategic Advisory & Head of Hospitality Research at Cushman & Wakefield, and has advised on hundreds of hotel investment projects across three continents. He sees hotel gyms as wasted real estate and a cost that rarely pays off. Tune in.

Recorded live at Mews Unfold in Amsterdam, this bonus episode brings Matt on stage with three hoteliers who've each rethought what a property is supposed to be like. Stijn Soolsma from Aedes, Josef Vollmayr from Limehome and Mirco Weber from AMANO Group talk through the operational decisions that come with breaking the standard model, what it takes to build a team that believes in a concept before it is proven, and how guests respond when you get it right.

A third of hotel guest messages go unanswered. Reconciling one invoice takes 20 minutes on average. And most hotels still have no clear picture of their business and revenue. Mews just launched five new products to change that, and the people who built them are here to walk you through each one. Matt talks Automations and Guest Messaging with Joel Ndreu, VP Product & Engineering, Front of House; Mews BI and Mews RMS with Conor Winders, VP Product & Engineering, Back of House; and Accounts Receivable with Yael Barak, VP of FinTech, Product & Engineering.

Why are hotels charging the same for a parking spot on a Tuesday and on a Saturday? For Mews CEO Matt Welle, that question sums up everything wrong with how hotels think about revenue and technology. In this solo episode, he breaks down one of the most debated questions in hotel tech: should your property run an open, best-of-breed stack or commit to a closed, all-in-one ecosystem? Matt draws lessons from Shopify, Toast and ServiceTitan, and explains Mews’ approach to the debate, including what’s coming up next.

Lark Hotels has grown into North America's leading hospitality management company for properties under 150 keys. With five self-managed brands, nearly 80 independent hotels and 22 restaurants across 24 states and two countries, they've built something rare in this industry. Peter Twachtman, the CEO behind that growth, explains the tech and operations model that holds it all together, and how Lark keeps each property worth staying in at scale.

98% of hoteliers use AI. Few use it well. They’re still plugging in tools that don't really understand how their property operates. Madeline Bushbeck understands this better than anyone, as she leads the strategy and roadmap for agentic AI product initiatives at Mews. Madeline joins Matt to talk about AI strategy in hospitality: where to start, what to automate, what to keep human and how to make AI work the way your property needs it to.

The PMS has been at the heart of every hotel for decades. Has it changed at all? What does the next generation PMS look like? Some of hospitality’s most well-known voices, Ira Vouk and Simone Puorto, join Matt to trace the full arc of hotel tech: why big brands are stuck on legacy systems, why hoteliers keep picking the wrong PMS and what every hotelier should ask before signing their next contract.

Matt arrived at an 800-room Marriott and ended up in a line that went out the door. In this episode, he breaks down what he'd do differently if he were running that front desk today. You’ll hear about the best housekeeping practices, early check-in charges, kiosks, online check-in and how all of it works together to shrink lines and drive revenue at the same time.

When Gorjan Lazarov became the CEO of OREA Hotels & Resorts in 2016, direct bookings were at zero and guests chose the brand mainly for its locations. Ten years and 20 hotels later, guest ratings are through the roof and 60% of revenue comes in through OREA’s own platform. Gorjan shares how the group rebuilt its culture, utilized innovative tech and turned OREA into one of the Czech Republic’s most beloved hotel brands.

Hotels have always been in the business of trust: guests hand over their passports, their credit cards, their personal information and expect it to be safe. But this industry is a prime target for cybercrime. What are some of the most common threats to data security in hospitality and how can hoteliers protect against them? Matt talks to CISO/Security expert Fleur van Leusden and Terry Brown, Senior Director of Engineering at Mews.

The best guest experiences don’t come from SOPs. Hotels invest in training programs, but the moments guests talk about long after checkout are rarely the ones anyone planned for. Miru Schuurman, Guest Performance & Product Quality Manager at Amrâth Hotels, shares how too much structure can create staff that sticks to scripts instead of reading rooms, and what that can cost you on OTA ratings.

Is it time we thought about the PMS as profit, not property management? Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) represents nearly 20,000 hotel owners who operate 60% of all hotels in the US. Mews has recently become AAHOA’s official PMS. The association’s Chairman, Kamalesh (KP) Patel, joins Matt to talk about the partnership’s impact, along with why technology is now a profit decision, especially if you’re an independent hotelier.

What makes your guests return? And why do some stays become stories people keep telling instead of just rating? Guido Lips has the answers to this. He is the Co-founder and Head of Guest Experience and Culture at The July, a group of unique aparthotels that blend hotel service with the feeling of living in a neighborhood. Guido joins Matt to talk aparthotels, mindful check-ins and what it takes to make guests feel like they belong.

This hotel doesn’t have a lobby, but it also doesn’t need one. Scattered around Amsterdam's canals, 28 abandoned bridge keeper houses have been transformed into SWEETS hotel, a collection of standalone suites. Suzanne Oxenaar, SWEETS' Curator and Artistic Director, shares how the hotel came to life and how technology helps manage rooms when they’re spread across the entire city.

De L’Europe Amsterdam recently became the first hotel in the Netherlands to earn a record three MICHELIN Keys. Open since 1896, De L’Europe Amsterdam carries a long history. What makes it stand out? And what comes with running the landmark everyone measures themselves against? De L’Europe’s Managing Director Robert-Jan Woltering talks heritage, luxury and the kind of hospitality that keeps a hotel at the top.

How do you grow from one hotel into a group and don’t become a rigid chain? Inge Decuypere, Owner of C-Hotels, breaks down the operational choices and technology decisions that enabled their growth from a single property to a multi-hotel group along the Belgian coast. Inge also shares how walking away from a global franchise meant gaining control over their own operations, without sacrificing the occupancy they'd built.

Vicky Irwin has spent over six years shaping how Mews looks, sounds and feels as the company's Creative Director. In light of Mews launching a new identity, she joins Matt to talk about branding in hospitality. What is a brand when you strip away the logo? What makes hotels feel disconnected from their own identity? And when does a rebrand become necessary? Listen in.

Can a hotel brand successfully scale while building social impact into its business model? The Social Hub, now certified as a B Corp, is built on the belief that a hotel can serve its city as much as its guests. The Social Hub’s Founder and CEO, Charlie MacGregor, shares what it takes to keep profit high and purpose alive as the company scales.

Hotels have spent years trying to convince guests to skip daily cleaning through towel reuse signs, drink vouchers or loyalty points. Having run large city hotels, Floris Licht saw firsthand how none of those ever worked. He ended up founding Hotels for Trees, a non-profit that turns skipped room cleans into forests. One skipped clean –⁠ one tree planted, with over 800 thousand trees planted so far. Floris joins Matt to explain how Hotels for Trees fits into hotel operations, from door hangers to the digital guest journey with Mews.

When hotel GMs receive hundreds of emails from software vendors claiming to be the best, judging new tech becomes difficult. That exact problem led to Hotel Tech Report, one of hospitality’s most-trusted review platforms. Its co-founder Jordan Hollander joins Matt to talk about what goes into hotel tech buying decisions. The episode lands as Mews wins Best PMS for the third year in a row and Best POS at the 2026 HotelTechAwards, run by Hotel Tech Report.

Can a hotel run with one seventh of staff and still outperform its peers? Bob W is built for the modern traveler who wants the best of both worlds: the consistency and reliability of a hotel, with the space, utility and local feel of a short-stay apartment. But what truly sets Bob W apart is its software-first mindset. Niko Karstikko, Co-founder and CEO of Bob W, joins Matt to explain how Bob W blends apartments, hotels and automation into a new hospitality category.

Cocoons and capsules sit at the heart of Zedwell Hotels’ London city-centre vision, where rooms are designed around sleep, efficiency and the realities of urban life rather than tradition. In this episode, Matt speaks with Halima Aziz, Head of Hotels at Criterion Hospitality, which owns and operates Zedwell Hotels, about turning forgotten city spaces into some of London’s most profitable hotel real estate, all while removing TVs, kettles and even windows from the rooms.

Survival requires food and water, but spirit craves community. By building sports clubs inside refugee camps, KLABU creates places where people can gather, play and regain a sense of normal life amid displacement. KLABU’s founder Jan van Hövell explains how these clubhouses are set up in crisis zones, why sports help build communities and how KLABU and Mews are collaborating to support indigenous Venezuelan refugees in Boa Vista, Brazil.

What can the hospitality industry expect in 2026? Especially given the rapid development of AI and the fact that a third of travelers already use LLMs to search and get travel inspiration. Wouter Geerts, Director of Market Research at Mews, joins Matt to break down the 2026 Hospitality Industry Outlook report, shaped by conversations with 18 industry experts, including hoteliers, tech vendors, consultants and investors. You’ll hear about the changing AI use cases in hotels, new guest behavior patterns and what determines which hotels get surfaced and booked in 2026.

From the archives* Rogier Braakman from Net OS and Mr. Green Offices joins Matt to talk occupancy, why offices have tolerated emptiness for decades, and what happens when you apply hotel logic to desks, pricing and space. Along the way, Rogier dives into what technology should handle, where people still matter, why hotel room desks are often a mistake, and how underused meeting rooms could become a serious revenue stream if hoteliers rethink how work actually happens today. *Note that this episode was originally released in March 2025.

From the archives* Matt sits down with Alexander Edström, founder of Atomize RMS, a Mews Company, to dive into the world of revenue optimization. They explore how revenue management software can help hotels of all sizes, the state of RMS adoption in hospitality and the undeniable revenue uplift these systems provide. Note that this episode was originally released in February 2025.

For this end-of-year special, Matt is joined by Mews founder Richard Valtr. Except this time around, they both ask each other questions. What was the first app they opened this morning? What advice have they ignored? What decision looked smart at the time but almost broke the company? From there, they talk about the drivers behind great hotels, the core of hospitality and the 13 years of working together to shape Mews into what it is today.

How do you build a revenue strategy for a hotel that melts away every spring? When the temperatures fall in Finland, Maria Mänty, Sales Director at Snowhotel Family, and her team shape memorable stays out of snow, freezing nights and the glow of the Northern Lights. They build extraordinary ice rooms, set up ice sculpture workshops and even snow saunas. Maria joins Matt to talk about what it takes to keep their Arctic SnowHotel & Glass Igloos thriving when what you sell only exists for a few months of the year.

Armen Melkonian was forced to flee war-torn Syria and then Lebanon, until he rebuilt his life from scratch in the Netherlands through UNHCR’s resettlement programme. He opens up about finding safety as a member of the LGBTIQ+ community, the challenges of acclimatizing to a foreign culture and how his experiences shaped a deeply personal approach to service. To Armen, hospitality starts with something small –⁠ a greeting, a moment of acknowledgment, the thing that tells someone they’re no longer invisible.

A five-star hotel and a Michelin-starred restaurant that welcome dogs? There’s a big difference between a hotel that embraces pets and one that simply tolerates them. Dean Culpan, General Manager of South Place Hotel in London, has built a dog-friendly approach that even drives more revenue: fuller weekends, higher on-property spend and loyal guests who return because their pets are treated well. He joins Matt to talk about rising demand for pet-friendly stays and how his team delivers a luxury experience for both guests and their fluffy companions.

When Luka Berger landed a summer job as a housekeeper at Yellowstone National Park, he didn’t expect it to inspire his whole career trajectory. But seeing staff juggle walkie-talkies and race between rooms to remain on top of housekeeping tasks ultimately sparked the idea behind Flexkeeping. In this episode, Luka shares how Flexkeeping, now part of Mews, uses AI to automate time-consuming housekeeping tasks and break down language barriers.