The Mews AI assistant can automatically reply to routine guest questions on your behalf, recommending amenities, sharing property-specific details, answering common questions, and escalate anything it cannot handle to your team. You set up your AI agent as a property administrator in Mews, in the Guest messenger settings, before you go live with Guest Messaging and any time your property's operations, amenities, or policies change. Setting up the AI agent well means faster replies to guests and fewer messages your team has to handle manually.

 

In this article, you can learn about:

• How to set up your AI agent for guest messaging

  • Add property guidelines

  • Generate guidelines from a policy or SOP

  • Manage active guidelines

  • Turn on AI replies

  • What happens when the AI can't handle a message

 

How to set up your AI agent for guest messaging

Add property guidelines

Property guidelines teach Mews how your property operates. The AI assistant uses them to answer guest questions accurately, in your property's voice.

Focus on the tribal knowledge that lives in your staff's heads: the operational context Mews doesn't already know from your setup. You don't need to add things Mews already tracks, like standard check-in times or room types. Add the non-obvious details guests routinely ask front desk staff about.

Common areas to cover:

• Contacting the property: how guests should reach your property and what to do out of hours. For example: “Reception is staffed from 9am to 5pm. For emergencies outside those hours, guests should call [emergency number] because the reception phone may not be answered.”

• Check-in and check-out: practical arrival and departure details Mews doesn't already know. For example: “Guests who arrive before their room is ready can store their bags at the front desk.”

• Facilities and amenities: how the property and in-room amenities actually work. For example: “The balcony door must be closed for the air conditioning to run.” TV channel lineup, whether guests can cast from a phone to the room TV, pool or gym access hours.

• Promotions and offers: direct-book incentives, loyalty perks, and current promotions guests can use. For example: “Returning guests can use code DIRECT10 for 10% off when they book direct.”

• Key policies and mechanics: the day-to-day details guests ask about, not the policies Mews already stores. For example: how the key card works at the room door, whether guests need the key card for the elevator, pool, or gym.

Add anything else guests or staff regularly ask about that isn't already in Mews.

Note: The AI assistant is reactive: it uses your guidelines to reply when a guest sends a message. For event-driven actions (like creating a task for the front desk before every guest arrival), use guest messaging automations instead. See How to create a guest messaging automation.

Generate guidelines from a policy or SOP

You can paste a policy, standard operating procedure, or description of how your property handles something, and Mews will generate the guidelines for you.

1. Go to the main menu > Guest messenger.

2. Click Settings in the top right of the Chats page.

3. Open the Property AI guidance tab.

4. In the Add guidance section, paste your policy or SOP into the text box, up to 5,000 characters. For example: “Always offer late checkout until 2pm to loyalty members at no charge.”

5. Click Generate guidelines, or press Cmd + Enter (Mac) or Ctrl + Enter (Windows).

6. Review the guidelines Mews generates, then save them.

 

Manage active guidelines

The Active guidelines section on the Property AI guidance tab shows every guideline the AI assistant currently follows. You can filter by department tag (for example, Front desk) or search by keyword.

• Department tags are chosen automatically. When a guideline is generated or saved, the Property Guideline Agent reads its wording and applies the most appropriate department tag for you. You don't need to set the tag manually.

• The maximum number of active guidelines is 200 per property at this time.

• To edit a guideline, click the pencil icon next to it.

• To delete a guideline, click the trash icon.

 

Turn on AI replies

Once your guidelines are in place, you can let the AI assistant start replying to guests automatically.

1. On the Property AI guidance tab, toggle AI replies on.

The AI assistant now responds to guests across all connected channels, using the guidelines you added.

 

What happens when the AI can't handle a message

The AI assistant escalates a conversation to your team when:

• A guest sends a message the AI cannot answer.

• A guest asks for a human.

• A team member clicks Needs staff review on a chat.

Escalated messages appear in the Focused tab of your Chats inbox so your team can reply.

When an escalation involves an operational issue (for example, a maintenance request or a housekeeping problem), the AI assistant also creates a task in Mews and assigns it to the right department automatically. Categorization is based on the guest's request:

• Housekeeping: linen, towels, room cleaning, cleanliness fixes, pests, housekeeping opt-outs.

• Maintenance: repairs, broken fixtures, plumbing, AC or heating faults.

• Management: guest feedback.

• Front desk: room-move sub-tasks (where a front desk department exists at your property).

For anything the AI can't map to one of these departments, for example, transport requests, wake-up calls, or general noise complaints, the AI creates a task without a department attached, so your team can route it.

If your property has Flexkeeping integrated with Mews, tasks sync to Flexkeeping automatically.

 

You can now let the AI assistant handle routine guest questions on your behalf, escalate anything that needs a human, and adjust its behavior any time by updating your property guidelines.