Transcript
[00:00:00] Richard Valtr: I'm very passionate about all the things that hospitality represents. I like the idea of one plus one equals three. I like the fact that that is the core of hospitality. The hotel doesn't need to win for the guest to lose.
[00:00:29] Matt Welle: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality, and this is the last episode of 2025. And in honor of that, I have invited Richard Valtr. Richard is the founder of Mews, and he's been my partner in crime for the last twelve years. And at the end of the year, like, if there's one thing that Richard hates鈥�
[00:00:46] Richard Valtr: We should actually do some crime as well, by the way, if we're going to use that phrase.
[00:00:51] Matt Welle: And if there's one thing that Richard hates, it's reflecting back on the past because he lives in the future. But we're gonna force him through some of those questions and actually see what he's done in the past twelve years or thirteen years of Mews, but also the last year. But I'll also ask him about the future.
[00:01:07] Richard Valtr: I also have a terrible memory, so that's one of the reasons, you know?
[00:01:11] Matt Welle: Or if it鈥檚鈥�
[00:01:13] Richard Valtr: I'm not also very eloquent about talking about, like, all the different, like, stages of things, basically. So I'm actually really, really interested in the way that you kind of frame and phrase them, so it'll be quite good.
[00:01:24] Matt Welle: So, I don't know what questions he has for me, and he doesn't know what questions I have for him, because we asked our teams, what will be good questions that we can both ask each other? So, we've just been given a list of questions, and we're just gonna see if this works. Maybe, maybe this will never see the light of day, and you'll never hear it. But if you do see it, then we've made it through this podcast. My first question to you is what was the first app that you opened up this morning on your phone?
[00:01:49] Richard Valtr: Slack.
[00:01:50] Matt Welle: No way. Slack is your go-to app?
[00:01:54] Richard Valtr: Slack is my go-to app. Yeah.
[00:01:57] Matt Welle: Before coffee?
[00:01:58] Richard Valtr: Before coffee, before anything else. Because it's also like, I'm waking up after you. So for me, like, half the day has already happened. So I kind of have to go to Slack to see what's actually happening. It's one of the weirdest things when I go back to Europe, and I wake up, and I open Slack and, like, nothing's happened. Yeah. And I'm like, what is this? There's nothing. Yeah. It's like, why is鈥�
[00:02:24] Matt Welle: So, what channel do you open first?
[00:02:27] Richard Valtr: Close one or Sales one
[00:02:29] Matt Welle: Of course. What sales deals we've closed yesterday.
[00:02:32] Richard Valtr: I understand. And then, like, putting my emojis onto every single one of them. And then I take my pick. I feel like I don鈥檛 know鈥�
[00:02:41] Matt Welle: Do you go straight, sorry, this is very niche, like, deep Mews.
[00:02:45] Richard Valtr: Nobody else would care about it.
[00:02:45] Matt Welle: Do you go for the heavy channels, or do you go for the fun channels? Like, I wanna just consume fun channels first.
[00:02:52] Richard Valtr: I won't go for, like, the really, really fluff stuff, grand fun and stuff like that, you know, like, at some point in the day, but I'll do the things which are kind of, like, top of mind. So, like, any strategic accounts, that's usually generally, like, a fun one. Or, for example, you know, we had our agentic off-site last week, so that was a fun read to kind of go through, like, how some of those are getting pushed to production. Just generally, I think, like, any kind of projects, those would be my first kind of go-to ones.
[00:03:26] Matt Welle: Nice.
[00:03:27] Richard Valtr: What about you? Like, how do you, because I'm sure you get this, no, when you then come to America. Then you, but how do鈥�
[00:03:34] Matt Welle: Last week, I was with you in America.
[00:03:35] Richard Valtr: Yeah.
[00:03:36] Matt Welle: My first app is usually CNN, but that's, like, three minutes. This is boring, and I go straight to TikTok. And then I spend an hour on TikTok, which in the U.S, I did the same. Like, I woke up at 5, and I spent an hour on TikTok drinking coffee, just I don't know. It just makes me so happy.
[00:03:53] Richard Valtr: Like, that's my, so, that's the thing. If I go to, I don't really go to Twitter anymore these days, but, like, if I do any of that, I'll do it at the end of the day. It's kind of like my reward. And I can see if, like, if my brain's getting tired, then I just wanted to kind of, like, do stuff on my phone.
[00:04:13] Matt Welle: Yeah. Mindless things. Has anyone ever given you advice that you've ignored and that you're proud of in hindsight?
[00:04:20] Richard Valtr: Almost all advice. Unless you specifically ask for advice with anything. I don't think that there is a single person that, like, likes receiving advice. No?
[00:04:30] Matt Welle: Yeah. But it's like when people ask you, you know, who's your biggest inspiration? Like, no one. Like, I'll take pizzas of everyone that I meet, and those combined make an inspirational person, but there's not one person that, like, is my inspiration to become.
[00:04:44] Richard Valtr: I hate it when I just feel like all different matters of threads, you know, about people or about companies are always, like, really, really damaging because especially, like, you know, people are like, oh, we should do it like this or, you know, or you go like, oh, you should model yourself after that. And it's just like, everyone, the way that somebody makes it work for themselves, basically, is always like a strange thing, and it's like there's never going to be a similar cocktail
[00:05:13] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Richard Valtr: That you can actually kind of put together.
[00:05:16] Matt Welle: No one has the context that you or I have about this business. So, like, there isn't someone who's left that before, done what we've done before. So you need multiple inputs, and then we just create a new human, a new Frankenstein, basically.
[00:05:27] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that was always a thing that was, like, really, really broken about the Rocket Internet model. It's just like, you know, just recreating European versions of successful American companies. It's like no. Like, those companies have existed because people had insights, you know.
[00:05:48] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:05:49] Richard Valtr: Like, not, and the insight can't be, this thing works.
[00:05:51] Matt Welle: It wasn't the product. It was the people behind the product that made it really, really special.
[00:05:55] Richard Valtr: Yeah. And I think that's why a lot of those companies, like, really, really end up scaling. And the ones that did make it from Rocket, like, did have really special founders who were able to then do it on their own, but they just don't have skin in the game, basically. So, like, why would they have staying power?
[00:06:12] Matt Welle: Did any of their companies make it bigger than the company that they were copying?
[00:06:17] Richard Valtr: I feel like Zalando and a few of those others. I think it's, like, it's really important to have a singular insight that's based on who you are or who, you know, who the team is, you know? I feel like Mews is such a reflection of, like, of me, of you, of Honza, of Pepa now, of Mike, you know, it's just like, it's the weird concoction of all of these things that actually makes a company. Yeah.
[00:06:46] Matt Welle: I agree.
[00:06:47] Richard Valtr: Naomi.
[00:06:48] Matt Welle: Right.
[00:06:49] Richard Valtr: Imagine a world with no pink lady apples. What are you putting out for your guests instead, and why?
[00:06:56] Matt Welle: So my point about the apple wasn't about the apple. It was just about thinking about what a customer would enjoy, and it can't be a really bitter apple that never spoils. And it was like if I was in Africa, I'm like, give me local fruits. Don't give me an apple. I've come out of Europe. We've got enough apples in Europe. And I think it's really just thinking about what would delight a person that's staying here. I stayed this weekend at a hotel and, you know, they knew I was coming, so they really tried their best. And it was lovely. They were really nice, but it was all the standard. There was the bucket of ice with a lovely bottle of wine in it, and an apple, a green apple, a pear, and a chocolate. Like, nothing unique to me. And with the chocolate, I'm like, oh, milk chocolate. Great. I'm lactose intolerant. They didn't think of me as a person. And the thing with the pink lady was, like, stop doing the thing that everyone else is doing. Stop listening to accountants. Just do a thing that guests love, and they will talk about. Two weeks ago, I stayed at the, or last week, we stayed at the Chicago State Pineapple. And I walked into my room, and I was genuinely surprised. And, yes, I would never decorate my house like the Grinch, but my whole room was gringed up. And I thought it was just, it was such a fun way to engage me in the concept of that room. And then I went to my team, and I said, is your room Grinch? And they're like, no. I was like, oh my God. So, like, they really did it maybe for me, or I don't know what the thinking was, but it became a talking point because it was something different. And that was the thing with the Apple for me. So it isn't about the pink lady. It's just about doing something that puts me as the guest at the heart of it.
[00:08:33] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Because it's so you're gonna remember that Grinch experience forever because it's so weird, you know? And it's鈥�
[00:08:40] Matt Welle: It was weird.
[00:08:41] Richard Valtr: Like, but it's like, hospitality is so part of, and that's the thing. Like, somebody could just put, like, spiky fruit or whatever. Any of those different things where鈥�
[00:08:51] Matt Welle: Dragon fruits.
[00:08:52] Richard Valtr: Put some dragon fruit or something. Yeah. Getting people to wonder why is also part of the fun.
[00:08:57] Matt Welle: Yeah. Like, why did they pick me for this particular thing?
[00:09:01] Richard Valtr: Like, do they know that I love dragons?
[00:09:03] Matt Welle: If Mews hadn't happened for you, what would you be doing right now?
[00:09:06] Richard Valtr: Probably starting a different company and, like, trying to make it Mews.
[00:09:11] Matt Welle: Yeah. But is hospitality the passion, or would you have been in a completely different industry, you think?
[00:09:16] Richard Valtr: I'm very passionate about all the things that hospitality represents. You know, I like the idea of, like, the one plus one equals three. Yeah. And I like the fact that that is at the core of hospitality. Like, the hotel doesn't need to win for the guest to lose. Yeah. Like, there's no scorekeeping in hospitality. It's like, if the guest has a great time, then that probably means that they've spent a huge amount of money. You know? And there's something in that that, like, I think is very near and dear to me, and I think that, like, it's the same thing with companies. Like, you don't need to, like yes, I think in terms of competition and stuff like that, but I feel like even if I look at the history of Mews, you know, like, I don't know if this is true, but I feel that generally some of the things that we've done in this industry have made the pot bigger for everyone else, you know? And I think that, like, I think the fact that we've raised so much money, basically, in this industry has, you know, shone the light on how big hospitality technology could be. I think that being able to kind of just get out of just the pure PMS category basically has opened the eyes of everyone to the idea. I think for hoteliers, it's been like, oh, I can get more stuff done with technology. For hospitality tech professionals, they're like, oh, I can also add these other modules. Basically, I don't have to stay in my kind of three-letter-acronym lane.
[00:10:56] Matt Welle: But do you feel passionately about problems in other industries that you're like, I wish I had time to solve that particular problem?
[00:11:03] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Maybe it's just like living in the U.S, but, like, health care. But, again, like, I kind of think of health care through the eyes of hospitality. I just feel like there's so much that you can do for people with the idea of taking care of them, and that, actually, you can find the money to do that. And I think that the idea of looking after somebody for their life, basically, there's something, a bit of that is hospitality, a bit of that can be, like, loyalty, and a bit of that is kind of, like, general living management. And so I feel like that's probably the other big thing, and, like, how you kind of think about, like, the financial aspect and, like, all of those things, basically, together, that's probably the other kind of big idea or big thing that I'm kind of, like, really passionate about. And I like, for me, that is hospitality. So it just all comes back to hospitality. I think it's, like, the way that we all treat each other, the way that we all come together, the way that we find spaces where we can actually kind of elevate each other. And, you know, I think that that's why, like, I once wrote this piece, which is about kind of the necessary friction in hospitality that, like, you know, whilst on the tech side, we're trying to kind of remove the friction. There is an aspect of, like, you want there to be elevated experiences, memorable things, and a lot of those things basically come from, you know, there being some kind of barrier. And even meeting a new person, basically, like, it's a barrier, right?
[00:12:44] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:12:45] Richard Valtr: Am I going to find this person interesting? Am I going to be able to actually kind of talk to this person? So I think from that perspective鈥�
[00:12:52] Matt Welle: So, regardless of whatever direction, you'd end up doing something linked to hospitality.
[00:12:57] Richard Valtr: Exactly. But I'm generally passionate about systems to do with that. What about you? Like, if you had to leave hospitality for some reason, what would be the other area, like, other industry that you'd be really, really passionate about, you think?
[00:13:19] Matt Welle: Like now, it's changed. But I think at the time, I couldn't imagine a world that wasn't hospitality. I think when you lured me into this company on the full free 10 plus, and I landed up here, I never thought we would actually be successful or run an actual tech company, and we would scale to the actual size that we are today. So I probably would have left, we would have stayed in hospitality because I just love hotels, and I would have just gone up my corporate ladder and just made it to whatever it is.
[00:13:46] Richard Valtr: I think that's different now.
[00:13:48] Matt Welle: It's 100% different.
[00:13:50] Richard Valtr: Like, from the vantage point of today. Like, what could you imagine?
[00:13:54] Matt Welle: I talk about it more, like, now because people ask you what's after Mews, and I often think that nothing. It's like it, it's Mews. This is it. But there is a life after Mews because that's the realism of life. Like, we're not gonna be doing this for the next 20, 30 years. Maybe we do it for another 10 years. So I think about like, I'm really enjoying this, for example, conversations, like, the media podcasting. I find it really interesting because I get to meet really interesting people, and I get to go down rabbit holes with them on, like, it's so indulgent to spend an hour with a really smart person and to get to ask them question after question after question and go deeper and deeper to get to know them, which you don't always do in a social interaction. We are rushing through life nowadays, so I enjoy that very much. But I also like to solve problems. So whatever big problem will come on my path at some point, I might jump into it. But for now, I'd probably like to do this more, but with a more diverse audience, like, go beyond hospitality and just talk about entrepreneurs, but even, like, talk to politicians and how do they see the future of the world and discover it. Like, I look at the news, and I see everyone talking about these short-term, like, oh, you know, we have a housing problem. So it's the fault of the performers. I'm like, I see how you took that shortcut somewhere, but there is a longer-term problem that we're solving here. And, like, what's the 10-year plan? And figuring out like, I get excited about going really deep on understanding, okay, well, what's driving the housing shortage? Let's go talk to these people. Let's go out and meet these people and listen to their challenges, and let's talk to experts and form an opinion because I don't have the answer, but I'd like to solve it in some way by just learning and speaking to people. But then I also realized that that is not my today's problem. That's a future problem that I'd love to tackle because today, making Mews the biggest company in the world is the challenge that we're having now.
[00:15:46] Richard Valtr: Yeah. It's weird. I'm kind of quite jealous of, like, what to be, like, a bunch of others did in Canada. They did that whole, like, Build Canada project. I think, like, I was asked because, like, the Czech elections were, like, a couple of months ago, I think. And they were just asking me about, like, what I would change, and I said, it's exactly that. Like, I think that it would be really, really good to basically have a longer-term plan that you could actually kind of then say to various different kinds of politicians, like, are you building towards that? You know, maybe it's the, maybe it's the communist in me that wants 5-year plans for everything. But I just find, like, you know, it's the one part of, like, Mews that I think is so amazing that we get to basically kind of say, like, look, this is where we wanna be in, like, 5, 10 years. And, you know, we're going to keep ourselves to these things, and I just wish that the countries did the same thing.
[00:16:45] Matt Welle: Yeah. Like, but even 5 years in the scope of changing a nation and, like, a housing problem, for example, it takes more because you'd have to build a tremendous amount of housing to solve those things, so.
[00:16:57] Richard Valtr: But you have to get the land. Yeah. Like you, yeah. Yeah. In the Netherlands, like, where are you, are you just gonna, like, dig up more of the ocean? Like, what are you gonna do?
[00:17:07] Matt Welle: That's why I think, like, I don't think 5 years is the thing, but our cycles are 4 or 5 years, right? So how do you sell a 10- to 15-year plan when the cycles are so short, and the attention span is getting shorter and shorter? And it's one of the really difficult but really interesting challenges to solve for.
[00:17:24] Richard Valtr: I do think that that is the problem of kind of politics and democracy today. And then I think, like, Kennedy might have got it wrong, you know, what your country can do for you, basically. Well, actually, you got it right. Like, you know, but what you can do for your country. And I feel like so much of the time, it's basically politicians kind of selling, you know, themselves and saying, this is what we're going to kind of do. But it's just like, no, no, no. Like, what are we going to do to move this country along? Like, you know, how are we all kind of, like, tied into this together? Like, where do we want to see ourselves, basically? And, like, you know, what are the sacrifices that we're going to make? So fine. Like, some of us are gonna have to pay higher taxes, you know, some of us are going to actually kind of get involved. Like, some of us might have to basically, like, you know, join the armed forces because it like, it's an increasingly, like, volatile world.
[00:18:13] Matt Welle: But is that not how you think about Mews then? So how do you, because we want our employees to have the same responsibilities, but how do you build that into the culture of Mews, where people take responsibility, and not just, oh, we're in a corporate, so I'm just gonna spend extra money on this flight. I'm gonna take the more expensive hotel, etcetera. How do you build that kind of culture in?
[00:18:32] Richard Valtr: I love how you're asking it that, like, you know, as if we don't talk about this. But, like, I think that, like, we try and do that with, for example, the constitution. I think we try to do that with being open. I think that there's, like, an interesting part of that, which is that the more and more that we get kind of closer to thinking about being a public company, and things like that, you also have to kind of think about openness in a different way. And I think that we've always used openness in this really, really nice way to kind of make everything feel like it's kind of two-sided. You know, that, like, transparency, basically, on the one side is great because people can feel that they understand a little bit more of, you know, what's happening in the Ivory Tower. But then you can use it as a kind of a bit of a bludgeon, basically, on the other side as well, to say, like, look, if you have the information, it's now your responsibility that you haven't actually, kind of, done something with it. And I think, like, one of my favorite conversations, you know, when somebody challenges us, and they often do, I think, you know, in our bushes, and it's just like, okay, well, what is your proposal? You know? Like, what would you like to change about the strategy? Like, if you don't agree with it, like, you have all the ears. Like, we are very, very happy to hear any of the different opinions, but you have to have an opinion. Yeah? And it鈥檚, like, kind of a disingenuous question because it's like we do have the space to be able to kind of think about these things. But I do think that anyone should be able to contribute an answer to things. And it's actually the people who are closest to the problems who usually are the ones who actually have some of the best answers. And I do think, like, that that's a thing that I think that both of us try within Mews as much as we can.
[00:20:28] Matt Welle: There's this question here. And I think I didn't have an answer myself, but I'm curious if you have one. What decision did we make that looked smart at the time, but in hindsight, almost ruined the company?
[00:20:38] Richard Valtr: Going to the U.S?
[00:20:41] Matt Welle: Yeah. Actually?
[00:20:43] Richard Valtr: It was like, I think that, when it was, like, 2019, right? And, like鈥�
[00:20:50] Matt Welle: Thankfully, you said, I'll pack my bags. I'll go to the U.S.
[00:20:56] Richard Valtr: No. But, like, I think at the time, because everything was going so well for us in Europe. It was like we basically would just, like, put a poll anywhere in Europe, and then, like, suddenly, like, you know, more and more hotels would sign up. And I think, like, I really have to say, like, the pandemic was, you know, for all the various reasons, terrible, basically. Like, you know, for the industry, for Mews as well, I think. But we had to just reset so many different ways of thinking, and it was just I think it was really, really good for us.
[00:21:30] Matt Welle: Do you wanna give context to what happened in that situation of 2019?
[00:21:34] Richard Valtr: So, yeah, so we came to the, so we raised our Series B round, which was, you know, pretty like, for us, I think, at the time, I think it was, like, it's, like, $32,000,000 or something like that when we raised, like, crazy amounts of money, basically at the time. And so I packed up my three-year-old and my eight-month-old, and my wife, and we moved to New York. And I don't think we had even the concepts of a relocation scheme at that time. And basically just arrived here, and we just hired 40 people, put them in an office in New York, and we're like, okay, great. Like, let's just, you know, conquer America. Yeah? And, like, in this very triumphant way. You know, I think in that kind of, like, European way of, like, well, you know, there was probably nothing before we arrived here, right? So we're just gonna show everyone how it's done. And, yeah, it was like, it seems like a similar place, but it's got, like, its own rules. We really underestimated just how difficult it would be. I think we didn't completely understand, like, all the ways the market is different because it's so much more branded versus independent. I think that in Europe, it's about 80% independent hotels, 20% brands. In the U.S, it's completely the opposite. So, yeah, so that was I think that really, if we'd been on that same trajectory and we didn't have to basically then I think the the pandemic coming in kind of allowed us to take a bit of a breather and to kind of say, actually, we're not gonna go as hard into the U.S, which is can consolidate Europe. And instead, we're going to actually use the time now to really find out, like, how to actually properly have a strategy in the U.S and make it an actual U.S strategy rather than, you know, a European strategy also on a different continent. So, yes.
[00:23:47] Matt Welle: I think we've had real success in the last two years in the U.S, and we're growing faster in the U.S than any other market today. But could we have achieved that if you hadn't moved there? Could we have just hired a team locally, and just looked for them to just鈥�
[00:24:01] Richard Valtr: I don't think I'm that special. But, like, I do think that it counts for a lot. I do think that, you know, it's important to have that. I think I think it is really do like, it's in the same way that I think, you know, growing outside of just the Czech Republic was difficult. You know? Then, having as strong a position as we have now in the Benelux in the rest of Europe is difficult. Like, I think all of these things are difficult, and I think that, you know, on the one side, I think it's good that we have the naivety that we think that it won't be as difficult.
[00:24:39] Matt Welle: How hard can it be?
[00:24:40] Richard Valtr: Exactly. There's a big premium for people to just try things. And I think that somehow we have the wisdom. Like, it's mainly your wisdom. Like, this is not my wisdom that, like, we can -
[00:24:53] Matt Welle: Rocking people higher.
[00:24:54] Richard Valtr: Kind of pull back when we need to and stuff like that. Do you have an answer for that? Like, or is there any other thing that you鈥�
[00:25:02] Matt Welle: I remember in the early days when basically, investors were kept saying, don't build the PMS, like, you're just gonna compete with the industry leader who is huge, and everyone kept telling us, just build the online check-in. And we're like, but we can't do online check-in on a bad architecture. But at some point, we said, right, we need to raise investments. Everyone seems to be excited about the online check-in. And we went about and said that, we stopped all developments, and we said, let's just build the navigator. The navigator was the product that we then called the online check-in, and everyone in the company was, one, building it. And, two, we would go around and say, we want letters of intent. So we went to all these customers and said, can you sign a letter of intent for just the online check-in? It's kinda crappy because you're gonna have to upload all your data manually.
[00:25:46] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:47] Matt Welle: And then whenever a customer fills it in, you're gonna have to upload that into your PMS system, but it's gonna be great. And we did that. And, basically, these customers never went live because it was a god-awful experience. And we listened to investors because we were so desperate to raise money, and we should have just never listened to the advice of investors because they didn't understand the space that we were in.
[00:26:08] Richard Valtr: Like, it's also, like, I feel like with that whole product, we were probably, like, a little bit too early because you look at, like, the success of, like, somebody like a canary now. It's like, it's the same thing that we were kind of doing back then.
[00:26:20] Matt Welle: But the APIs weren't there to the legacy systems at the time.
[00:26:23] Richard Valtr: That's the point. Like, Oracle still didn't really, yeah, it didn't even have a concept of an API. It was still, like, the OHIP one now is, like, pretty good, basically. But, like, back then, it was鈥� So, I feel like all of these things, I think that's the thing that's, like, terrible about company buildings that, like, there really aren't that many bad ideas. Yeah. There's just bad execution on good ideas. Yeah.
[00:26:51] Matt Welle: Yeah. Yeah. It's the prioritization of it. Like, in the end, if I see now what we do with our platform, it is so wide-ranging, and the depth of the features is so deep. But, like, in the early years, we didn't have it. So we basically convinced a smaller subset of customers to take the solution as is. And now we take almost every box when you get an RFP. We can tick all of the boxes of all of the features, etcetera, which is mind-boggling. But it's 12 years of building relentlessly and doing the really, so the stuff I talk about on LinkedIn are the really exciting features that anyone in the world can understand because of the pains at the front desk. But we've just rebuilt our accounting infrastructure, and very rarely do we talk about that because it isn't very exciting for a conversation on LinkedIn. But when we talk to accountants like this, this weekend, I was with a hotel manager, and she's like, my accountant is, I don't know what you did, she said, but my accountant is so happy with these reports you guys have built. And it's just, it makes me so happy because we built for two years on that whole architecture. But they're not great stories for LinkedIn, unfortunately. Maybe I'm not a good storyteller, and I just need to learn how to do that one.
[00:27:57] Richard Valtr: I think it's because you've become too popular. You know? Like, I liked you more when you were niche. What's your favorite Mews customer story?
[00:28:05] Matt Welle: Like, there are multiple. You know, the one in Paris, Maison M猫r猫, is one of my favorites. I had him on stage, and he was talking about how, and it was a small hotel, and he's scaling now, but how he was segmenting customers into, like, 12 different segments. And, you know, he used that data to create really personal experiences, and then he had the systems kind of facilitate it. And I was like, I've gotta see this. And then I went to Paris, and I booked that hotel because of the story she told on stage with me on a panel. And it was so good. Like, I walked in, and the receptionist said, oh my God. Hey. Welcome to the hotel. How's Beyonce? She's that was the first thing she said. I was like, how do you know about Beyonce? And Beyonce is my dog, it's not the superstar. I'm not, I don't know her yet.
[00:28:51] Richard Valtr: We're friends.
[00:28:52] Matt Welle: Yeah. But then I went into the room, and there were, like, dog toys there. They've written, like, they've done such nice things. And it is those things when a hotelier actually looks at me as a person and then actions it. And that's what we try to facilitate through Mews, like, through our AI. We consume everything we know, and we give them these tooltips. The other day, we had that amazing LinkedIn post from our hotel manager who said my parents had arrived at the hotel. And when they checked in, the front desk staff served them mojitos. And he's like, that's not our welcome drink. It's like, and so he went to this team, and he said, why did you serve the mojitos? Because we have a different welcome drink. And they said, no. Last time they stayed with us, the AI tooltip said they consume mojitos in the bar, and, therefore, we took initiative. And it and he's like, that's incredible. And it's just where AI comes in to actually see what people have spent in the hotel, so that you don't give me, when I check in, whatever milk chocolate, because I'm lactose intolerant. You just get something from me personally. And the impact that we seem to be having now is real, without us having to push it really hard. It's just happening organically, and that's the thing that really excites me.
[00:30:00] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Just my brain is constantly going to like, when we were at the Agentic off-site, yeah, last week, and we were kind of talking about, like, how to make sure that we can also segment the times of days.
[00:30:15] Matt Welle: That's the semantic layer. The semantic layer will solve everything.
[00:30:19] Richard Valtr: But it's so interesting to figure out, like, how we can then, you know, segment people basically even into the different modes that they're in. You know? So understanding, like, am I a business map? Am I one big trip away map, basically, or am I just kind of a sightseeing map? You know? And I think, like, having all of those different personas, not just as鈥�
[00:30:45] Matt Welle: Because I am a genuinely different person when I travel on business versus leisure. And I, on leisure, yes, I'd love to have a conversation at the reception desk. But when I'm on business, get me to my room and get me the Wi Fi code as fast as possible, and is the gym open?
[00:30:57] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I think it, like, it's so I think that's, again, like, why hospitality is just so unbelievably interesting. I think it's just, like, from a technological perspective, it throws up so many questions that, like other companies, I think, are more obsessed with scale. I think what's really nice about hospitality, it's actually, like, it鈥檚 the smallest industry, you know, it really, really goes down to that atomic layer of every single person.
[00:31:27] Matt Welle: This weekend, I was spending a weekend with a hotelier. She's also my friend, and she uses Mews. But I said, can I see the checklist of your front desk? And she's like, yeah, sure. I've got them here. And she sent me the checklist of the front desk. And the front desk has literal things on there that say, 鈥淲ash the dog urine off the entrance hallway and then go into Mews and check the VIP arrivals.鈥� And it's the variations of things that humans in hotels have to do, and they're distinctly different between hotels. You can't copy-paste, like, that checklist and solve all of it. But it's the really exciting things where, actually, AI can do a large portion of those things that are really complex if you can somehow build in this local context. And that's why we enjoyed that off-site with our Agentic team so much, because we're like, no, no, let's tell you some more crazy stuff that we do in hotels. And, like, it's really interesting when you come into this industry unknowingly, you think, how hard can it be to run a hotel? But you're dealing with, it鈥檚 humans serving humans, and we are really difficult. And you can't automate all of that, but we can automate probably 90% of it, so that for the last 10%, we have a lot of fun with it.
[00:32:34] Richard Valtr: And like, I do have to say, not to kind of hop off on about it, but I'm just so full of it. Like, one of my favorite things was when I, like, got stuck in a little bit with one of the teams for the demos, and then we would try to basically kind of create this kind of translation tool, essentially. And we were trying to translate basically into different kinds of languages, but we were also trying to make sure that, like, the information felt really accessible and things like that. And it's so interesting, actually, kind of like figuring out the exact right persona of the prompt, basically. And so, you know, it was, we would kind of go through and would say, like, and this, you know, 鈥渢ranslate in a way that's, like, idiomatically sound鈥�, and you know, you'd use all of these kinds of phrases. And in the end, the engineer just, you know, the way that we got some of the translations perfect was basically, you know, was essentially getting the LLM to be, you know. The actual prompt was, like, translate in a way that is idiomatically sound. So you're kind of making sure that, like, the things make sense basically to that hotel and to that specific place, but also pretending that you're a native speaker. And the translation quality just, like, massively shot up. You know? And it was just like it was crazy to see just how those little tweaks of things actually, you know, because I think that's the exact thing. Like, you know, if you get a crappy translation and you're, you know, doing something like, you know, you're ordering an Uber, nobody really cares.
[00:34:23] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:34:24] Richard Valtr: But for some reason, people really care about the translation of a specific thing on a website, basically, or in a place, like, you know, talking about a room. It's actually, the hotels care the most about these types of things; they're like, no, no, no. This isn't correct. You know? And I think, like, it's because like, we're going through a rebrand, right? And, like, one of the things I love is that, like, the central insight about hospitality being all about the details, you know. And it's just, it's so fun thinking about it basically from that perspective sometimes, you know, and thinking about, like, it's the one industry where the details make up the entirety of the experience. And so, like, our system has to be so unbelievably precise with the details.
[00:35:17] Matt Welle: When we opened the emblem, I don't know if you remember, we had this long session of what are we gonna call the rooms, and we've taken liberty on how we're gonna call them. So we, you know, the twin room was the Twinkie, and then you had the Sweet Pretender. And they're really, they work really well in English, but if AI starts translating those things, they don't land, and you've gotta figure out how do we do that translation, but actually have the way that it's funny in English also land in other languages? And that's really, really hard.
[00:35:47] Richard Valtr: Yeah. But it's exactly those things. And, like, again, like, I wouldn't be able to tell you, basically, like, what the exact translation of that is in German. But, actually, like, probably an LLM would be closer to that than me going to a dictionary or any of these things. So it is, like it's yeah, exactly. Like, what's a Twinkie? You know, like, because there are so many things.
[00:36:15] Matt Welle: I don鈥檛 know if people actually get the reference like that. It was a candy.
[00:36:18] Richard Valtr: It's a candy. Yeah. I think some people do, you know?
[00:36:21] Matt Welle: The Americans do. Yeah. Looking forward, your favorite thing, what's the thing you get excited about for 2026?
[00:36:29] Richard Valtr: Like, right now, it is all of the stuff that we're doing with our agentic team. I just think there's so much, like, cool stuff that we're already doing. Like, it just, it goes so quickly, bbut I think that that's also to do with the amount of work that the the whole of the R&D team and actually, like, even all of our GTM teams have kind of undertaken in terms of us really, really looking at how do we become a kind of more proper platform for our hotels? And the amount of work that we've done to actually kind of fuse so many different features and so many different things together. I think we've done always a very, very good job of that, you know, with the marketplace. But I think this year, we've kind of we've been able to take that one step further to actually say, you know, that we're going to take much more direct responsibility to make sure that we're driving some of those outcomes.
[00:37:30] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:37:31] Richard Valtr: And I just, I really I love to see how, for example, you know, with our RMS, you know, the way that we first got Atomize in and now with seeing, you know, all of the different screens basically within Mews, all of the ways that we're going to kind of fuse it together to become a true kind of PRMS, basically, and make those kind of revenue decisions actually a core part of part of the system. And I think the same thing, you can think about housekeeping and scheduling and staff management, and it's just so exciting to actually see all of these things coming together, and it does feel like a completely kind of new paradigm of hospitality technology. So I get really, really excited about that. And then, you know, and then having, like, a very, very young team that codes in such a different way that basically, like, you know, it's so funny, like, working with the engineers because it's just like, it's suddenly, like, even the code is basically like much more accessible because you're kind of talking to the to the code, talking to the system. So actually, all of those things are just incredibly, incredibly exciting for me. What about you?
[00:38:48] Matt Welle: Like, I think in there, like, I agree with the ecosystem. So, like, you look at what people have tried to do, which is, like, private equity companies buying up all kinds of solutions and then saying, right. You're now a cobbled-together solution, but they never invented them inside each other.
[00:39:03] Richard Valtr: A Frankenstein.
[00:39:05] Matt Welle: Yeah. It's a true, like, Frankenstein's monster, basically, that they created.
[00:39:08] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Yeah. Here's the head of a chicken on a pig.
[00:39:12] Matt Welle: But it didn鈥檛 ever work, right? So many times have we seen private equity companies trying to come in, cobble together an ecosystem, and then push it out to the market, but it never innovated. Like, it worked from a commercial model so that they could sell all these products to these customers, but it never innovated. And we know what we've been doing in the backend, which is fusing them together into a singular platform where you have all these functionalities from all these great systems, and we take the best of them, and we fuse them into this core thing. And all of those pieces will start to fall in place next year. I think that's the thing that really excites me. Like, already today, hoteliers love the innovation that we bring, but it's like, what happens if our point of sale and our PMS and what we've done with door locks come together with an RMS? And we start to connect all the dots from, okay, this guest is spending money in our restaurants, and that's adding to the total revenue profile in the PMS, so that the revenue management system can pick up on those revenue things and queues and optimize for TRevPAR instead of RevPAR. And I think it's that thing that we've been building towards that slowly is really coming to fruition, and I can see the end of the tunnel already in sight. And it's hard because we've been at this for so many years, and we've been talking about it. But now it's reality, or there are pieces of it that have already become reality.
[00:40:30] Richard Valtr: Well, but it's, but it's also, like, it's so funny because, like, there are so many conversations that I remember having, like, back in 2015 about these things that it, like, this is the kind of the problem with sometimes being fast in some of these things. It's like, you know, I think that we launched, basically, the open API as almost a thing that we needed to do, basically, and it was just a thing that we were like, oh, this kind of totally makes sense. And then we were, like, talking about it and saying, like, oh, you know, it would be great because all of these companies will now have that shared level of openness that they'll want to collaborate on all of these great features together and create all of these things. And like, it's so funny as well because, like, the whole OpenAPI thing, like, took a life of its own. Now people kind of go, like, well, is your OpenAPI the most open that it could possibly be? Like, it doesn't live up to the standards of hyper-hyper openness, basically, or is it like, you know, and it's never supposed to be about, like, the thing itself. Like, it's just like you're supposed to do it because it reaches some kind of goal. And I think that's one of the things that, like, I think that I always kind of come back to, where it's like the great thing about being first in some of these areas is that you still remember why it was that you did it. And I think that, like, now us being able to actually kind of do these things, it's like the reason why we opened up the API was because we wanted guests to have these experiences of having combined systems work together. And, unfortunately, it's difficult for multiple companies to coordinate like that, and so it's just you know, the PMS basically has to kind of take on that central coordination function. I think that's the biggest learning that I think we've had around it.
[00:42:31] Matt Welle: Nice. Well, thank you for joining today.
[00:42:33] Richard Valtr: Thank you.
[00:42:35] Matt Welle: And also thank you to everyone who's been listening throughout the year. Like, it's been incredible to see the listenership growing every single week that we drop an episode, but also the amazing hoteliers and technology partners that have joined and have shared their insights. Because I think part of what makes hospitality so great is that we share. We don't hide these things from each other. But when we share insights, others learn from them, and then it makes our hospitality industry better. So I will keep going with this thing because I am really, really enjoying this so much. And it's almost indulgent because it isn't my job to be out here doing a podcast, but I really love it.
[00:43:09] Richard Valtr: And you鈥檙e so good at it. I'd like also to say thank you because it's just so good to have, actually, like, a product marketing function that just comes from pure passion.
[00:43:21] Matt Welle: Nice. Thank you.
[00:43:24] Richard Valtr: Yeah. Thank you.
[00:43:25] Matt Welle: Happy Christmas, everyone, or happy holidays if you have different religious holidays. But, like, I'm very thankful, and we're very excited for next year. So just keep tuning in. We'll keep sharing, oversharing as we always do, but you know, we'll see you in the new year.
