Matt Talks Hospitality: Real conversations for innovative hoteliers

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.