Bookable services are those your guests can book when they make a reservation at your property. Your original Stay service is the accommodation service you offer to customers, which Mews automatically creates. You can delete a bookable service, but you cannot delete the Stay service.

 

You can set up long-stay services in Mews, which do not restrict you to offering accommodation services only. With new space types in Mews, the system also supports services like monthly parking, co-working memberships. You can learn about long-stay services here and how to create new bookable services here.

When a customer reserves accommodation at your property, they purchase your stay service or another bookable service. If you want customers to purchase products with their reservation, you need to create products and attach them to a bookable service.

 

Note: Guests can purchase Additional services and any attached products only at the property. You then manually add the purchased services and products to the customer's bill in Mews Operations.

 

Learn more about the relationship between products and services here.

 

In this article, you can learn about:

• Bookable service settings

  • Overview of bookable service settings

    • Basics

    • Booking and guest communications

    • Times and occupancy

    • Accounting categories

    • Advanced

  • Updating bookable services

 

Bookable service settings

Overview of bookable service settings

The settings page of a bookable service shows the service name and the navigation path at the top, for example, your property name > Services > Stay. Click a section name to open or close it. Each field has a short hint that explains what it does. A banner at the top of the page lists what the service still needs before guests can book it: a space category, spaces, and an active rate.

Use the menu on the left side of the page to open other areas of the service, such as Space categories, Rates, Restrictions and Booking engines.

Basics

Field	Description
Add translation	In the drop-down, click to select the language you want to add. This creates duplicates of the fields listed below. You can then enter the information again in your selected language.
Name	Enter the name of the bookable service, usually ‘Stay’.
Short name	Enter an abbreviated name for places in Mews Operations where space is limited, such as tables, calendars, and reports.
Description	Enter a short description of your bookable service to be shown to guests when they book this service online, including important information for customers, for example, hours of service or purchase details.
Display order	Choose the position you want your bookable service to occupy in a list of your property's services. Lower numbers appear first. Choose a value lower than all your other bookable services if you want to view this service by default on your Mews dashboard. Note: Mews chooses the default bookable service based on the display order, not by its creation date, and pre-filters your Timeline and reports to the default service. Mews remembers your default display order choice for future use across the system. You can change the bookable service that your Mews Dashboard displays anytime by changing its Display order value.
Image	Upload an image for the service. Click or drag a file to the upload area, or click Choose file.

Booking and guest communications

This section contains the links to your property's legal pages, then groups the options for checking in, checking out, guest emails, housekeeping, cancellations, and billing and ordering. Each option has a switch at the end of its row. Click the switch to turn the option on or off. When an option is on, the switch is purple and the knob is on the right. When it is off, the switch is grey and the knob is on the left.

Field	Description
Terms and conditions URL	Enter the URL for the terms and conditions page on your property's website. When a customer clicks Property T&C in the Mews Booking Engine and the Guest Portal, they are directed to this page. You can enter a different URL for each language. Note: This field is only valid for the Mews booking engine and the Guest Portal. If your property uses Mews Kiosk, you also need to fill out your T&Cs in HTML.
Privacy policy URL	Enter the URL for the privacy policy page on your property's website. When a customer clicks Property Privacy Policy in the booking engine they are redirected to this page. You can enter a different URL for each language.

Check-in

Choose whether the system checks in reservations automatically at their arrival time, marks the space as dirty when a guest checks in, and requires a payment or preauthorization before a guest can check in. Automatic check in only works for confirmed reservations when the space is vacant.

Check-out

Choose whether guests can check out online, and whether the system checks guests out automatically at their departure time or after they complete online check out. You can also choose whether check out marks the space as dirty and whether the system closes bills with a zero balance.

Guest emails

Choose which emails the system sends to guests automatically: confirmation emails, an email 48 hours before check in that takes guests to the Guest portal to add legally required information, emails after check in and after check out, reminders before an optional booking is released, and cancellation emails. You can also add a QR code to the emails. Guests who book through a channel manager most likely also receive a confirmation email from the channel.

Housekeeping

Choose whether the system changes inspected spaces to clean overnight, so housekeeping checks them before guests check in, and whether staff can skip cleaning from the Reservations management screen.

Cancellations and no-show

Choose whether the system applies cancellation fees to canceled reservations by default, cancels optional reservations on their release date, and cancels no show reservations from the previous day every morning at 6:00.

Billing and ordering

Choose how the service appears on bills and how orders work. You can bundle products into one package price, show each item separately on guest bills, let staff override the price or tax, and require a segment or completed notes for orders. You can also process orders automatically, make the service orderable only with products, and bill monthly stays only for the days guests stay. This is called pro-rata charging and only applies to monthly services.

Times and occupancy

Field	Description
Bookable period	Determines whether the bookable service is based on overnight or day use. Learn more about day use bookable services here. Note: You cannot change this setting once you create the service. The field is greyed out on the settings page. To use a different period, create a new service.
Arrival time	Enter the official arrival time of your property, i.e., your property's default arrival time for all new reservations.
Departure time	Enter the official departure time of your property, i.e., your property's default departure time for all new reservations.
Occupancy starts	The earliest time you can consider a space as occupied with regards to availability and reporting.
Occupancy ends	The latest time you can consider a space as occupied with regards to availability and reporting.
Online check-out email timing	Enter the number of hours and minutes before your property's departure time that you want Mews to send the online check-out email, for example, 23 hours 30 minutes. Next to the fields, Mews shows when it sends the email on the departure day, based on your departure time. For example, with a departure time of 11:59 and a timing of 3 hours and 5 minutes, the preview shows Sent at 08:54 on the departure day.

Accounting categories

Field	Description
Default	Choose a default accounting category for your bookable service. Mews uses it when the rate or space category has no category of its own.
Rebate	Choose a default accounting category for rebate items. If you leave it empty, rebates use the default category.
Canceled item	Choose a default accounting category for canceled items. If you leave it empty, canceled or rebated items keep their original category.
Cancellation fee	Choose an accounting category for cancellation fees. If you leave it empty, Mews uses the general cancellation fee category.
No-show fee	Choose an accounting category for cancellation fees applied to reservations that were not checked in because the guest was a no show. If you leave it empty, Mews uses the cancellation fee category.
Positive deposit	Choose an accounting category for positive deposit charges. This is where the positive part of a deposit posts. It stands in for the prepaid charges on the bill. Note: This only applies to countries where VAT is payable at the time of consumption.
Negative deposit	Choose an accounting category for negative deposit charges. This is where the negative part of a deposit posts. It stands in for the prepayment on the open bill. Note: This only applies to countries where VAT is payable at the time of consumption.

Advanced

Fields marked with an asterisk are required. Change the overbooking and space assignment settings only if you actively manage them.

Field	Description
Overbooking behavior	Choose how overbookings impact your availability: Select Spread overbookings across higher categories (diffusive) if you want overbookings in lower space categories to take availability from higher space categories. This option helps prevent overbooking your whole property. Select Keep overbookings within the same category (discrete) if you want overbookings to affect only the availability of the overbooked space category. This option increases the risk of overbooking your whole property. Note: For both options, you still need to resolve overbookings manually. You can learn more about the overbooking behavior in the Timeline article here.
Space assignment	Choose how you want Mews to assign incoming reservations when more than one space is free: Select Bottom up if you want Mews to assign reservations to spaces in ascending order, from the lowest floor number to the highest. Select Preferred space features if you want Mews to assign reservations to spaces based on how well they match the customer's preferred space features. Note: If you set up the reservation assignment strategy for a space category, Mews Operations prioritizes the space category's strategy first. Select Random if you want reservations to be spread out equally across your property. Note: This option is not appropriate for properties that have a lot of business reservations, as this results in groups being split up. Select Top down if you want Mews to assign reservations to spaces in descending order, from the highest floor number to the lowest. Do not change this setting unless you intentionally manage how the system assigns rooms. Note: You cannot disable automatic space assignment.
Dependent rate calculation	Choose how Mews calculates dependent rate prices so that your pricing strategy matches your property setup. The setting affects new reservations only. Total stay price: the dependent rate applies the adjustment to the total price of the booking, including all guests. For example, for four adults on a ten percent discount rate, the price is ten percent off the parent rate for four people. Standard occupancy only: the dependent rate applies the adjustment only to the standard occupancy. Extra guests are priced using per-guest adjustments. For example, for four adults in a double room on a ten percent discount rate, the price is ten percent off the two-person price plus two extra guest adjustments. You can learn more in the How to apply a pricing mode for dependent rates in Mews Operations help article.
City tax	Choose your city tax rate.
City tax handling	Choose how Mews adds city tax to bills: Select Excluded from price if you want Mews to add city tax to the price of reservations. For example, if a reservation costs 10 euro and city tax is 2 euro, the guest pays 12 euro. Select Included in price if you want Mews to deduct city tax from the price of reservations. For example, if a reservation costs 10 euro, and city tax is 2 euro, the guest pays 10 euro.
Check-in style	Choose how and where guests check in at your property and collect keys. This also determines the message they see at the end of online check-in: Select At reception if you want to tell your guests to pick up their keys at reception when they arrive. Select Digital Key if you want guests to use the digital key to access their room. Note: This option is only available if you purchase the Digital Key. Select Kiosk if you want to tell guests to check in at your Mews kiosk and create their keys with a key encoder. Select Online if you want to tell guests that they receive an email with more information about how to collect their keys. Note: You need to send this email as Mews does not do it.
Housekeeping interval	Set the status of a space from Clean to Dirty after a specified number of days. For example, if the field is set to two days, Mews changes the space automatically to Dirty after two days. Each unit represents a period of 24 hours, with automatic changes occurring between 04:00-05:00.
Service key	You can use this field to store a unique identification code to map the service with other systems.
Channel manager segment	Choose a segment for reservations created through channel managers.
Booking engine segment	Choose a segment for reservations created through the Mews booking engine.
Default segment	Choose the default segment for your service.
Responsible department	Select the department that is responsible for bookable services. Mews informs each member of this team when you receive new orders from the sources you select in Notification sources.
Responsible employee	Select the employee who is responsible for bookable services. Mews informs them when you receive new orders from the sources you select in Notification sources.
Notification sources	Choose if you want Mews to notify the responsible employee and department about new reservations from the booking engine, your channel manager, or reservations created by staff in Mews Operations.
Notification type	Choose how Mews notifies the responsible employee and department: by email, by in-app notification, or both.

Updating bookable services

Before you can sell a bookable service, you need to update your bookable service by setting up your spaces, rates, and restrictions. The banner at the top of the service settings page shows what the service still needs. To do this:

1. In Mews Operations, go to the main menu > Settings > Services.

2. Click on a bookable service, for example, Stay.

3. Click the name of a section to open it. The sections are Basics, Booking and guest communications, Times and occupancy, Accounting categories, and Advanced.

4. Update the bookable service settings.

5. Click Save.

To return to your list of services, click Services in the navigation path at the top of the page.

You can learn more about creating new bookable services here.