Good Morning Hospitality Why Mews Raised $300M and Thinks Hotel Tech Has Been Built Wrong for 30 Years
Jan 23, 2026
Richard Valtr, founder of Mews and a leader in hospitality tech strategy, discusses why Mews raised $300M and what that funding unlocks. He critiques legacy PMS gatekeeping and argues for open APIs, data standards, and AI-ready systems. Conversations cover redesigning hotel systems, measuring guest experience over RevPAR, and what automation should and should not do.
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Model Guests, Not Rooms Or Folios
- Every interaction and transaction should map to a guest profile, not to isolated property systems.
- Valtr says thinking multi-property and lifetime experience is essential for modern hospitality software.
Cleanse Data Before Adding AI Agents
- Clean and unify data before layering AI agents; garbage data yields garbage AI results.
- Valtr warns you must rebuild the model so CRM is the canonical representation, not the PMS folio mapping.
RevPAR Is The Industry's Original Sin
- Valtr calls RevPAR the industry's "original sin" because it pushes asset-centric, not guest-centric, behavior.
- He proposes guest spend and lifetime value as the right core metrics for an asset-light, brand-driven model.