Skip to content

Mews

This page explains how the Mews plugin works within the EleaOpen project.

What is Mews?

Mews is a Property Management System (PMS) that lets you manage your hotels on multiple platforms such as Booking or Airbnb. Our clients use Mews as their PMS, and we developed this plugin to act as a bridge between Mews and the EleaOpen platform.

How the plugin works

The idea is simple: you install the plugin, configure it, and your EleaOpen account will automatically receive reservation information. This data is used to create, update or remove keys when needed.

We assume you won’t use this plugin from the very beginning of your customer registrations. By the time you configure it, you’ll probably already have many reservations in Mews.

To handle this, we added a Reservations Sync button. You’ll use it once to synchronize all existing reservations from Mews with EleaOpen.

After setup and syncing, you can forget about the plugin. It will keep running in the background, keeping everything up to date.

Installation and Configuration

To install and use the Mews Plugin, first install it via Marketplace:

  1. Click on the Marketplace navigation button on the left.
  2. Search for the Mews Plugin, click Install, then click Save.

Account configuration

  1. Click on My company, and at the bottom in the Installed plugins section find the Mews plugin. Click the settings button (gear icon).
  2. In the Mews plugin configuration panel, you’ll find 3 buttons, and only one of them will be accessible for now - Account settings. Click it.

  3. In Account settings you’ll find a field where you need to paste your Access token.

    Access token - a long string of characters and numbers you need to provide. You can get it by installing the EleaSoluciones plugin in the Mews Marketplace. On that page, find the key button and copy your Access token. It gives the EleaOpen platform access to your property information such as reservations, resources and customers. If you have more than one property, you need to ask Mews for Portfolio Access Tokens.

    Then decide if you want to change the reservation state from "To check in" to "Checked in" every time the guest opens the door for the first time. If yes, enable the this checkbox. By default, it’s enabled because this is the normal behavior.

    Also we added a feature "Auto‑update check‑in time for clean rooms" that, if enable, changes the reservation keyring start time after cleaning. You could read about this here.

  4. After that, click Save. If your Access token is correct, you’ll return to the plugin settings. You’ll see that Accommodation settings and Synchronize reservations buttons are now enabled.

At this point, the account configuration is complete, and you’re ready to configure your accommodations and then synchronize your existing reservations with Mews.

Accommodation configuration

Once you configure your account, you’ll probably want to link your apartments in Mews with groups in EleaOpen. To do this:

  1. Have or create groups with doors in EleaOpen.

  2. Go to Accommodation configuration and click Sync resources.

    Resource - an internal name in Mews used to describe different types of apartments, rooms or other options. In our case, Accommodation is equal to Resource.

  3. You’ll see a table with Resource and Group. Choose a group for every resource you want to use and click Save.

    By default, no resources have groups. This means that when you change a reservation in this resource and EleaOpen receives a notification, no changes will apply because the resource is not linked.

After linking resources with groups, the Mews plugin will start working. Every time you create, update or remove a reservation, EleaOpen will receive a notification via webhook and create, update or remove the corresponding keyring.

Synchronizing reservations for the first time

After the initial and accommodation configuration, you may want to import all existing reservations from Mews. This is why we have the Synchronize reservation button. After pressing it, you’ll see a window asking for the sync period. Check the latest reservation date and choose the period.

Example: If your latest reservation is in 8 months, choose 1 year. If it’s in 2.5 years, choose 3 years. You can choose 5 years, but it will make the page load longer.

SYNCRONIZE RESERVATIONSBUTTONMEWS APIELEAOPEN MEWSPLUGINKEYRING1KEYRING2KEYRING3RESOURCEHAS GROUPMEWS APIADD PININFORMATION ON CLICK SENDS REQUESTS RESPONSE WITH NEW DATA CHECKS CREATES UPDATES REMOVES

After syncing, you’ll see how many bookings were synchronized and how many new or updated keyrings were created.

The Mews documentation says that notifications about changes in reservations, resources or customers are generated in 2-5 minutes. If you don’t want to wait, you can use the Reservation sync button, but be aware: pressing it too often can temporarily pause your Access token for about 5 minutes due to too many requests.

How we process reservations

We have 3 cases:

  1. If we receive a new reservation, we simply create the keyring using the data from the reservation and send the PIN to Mews as Service Order Notes(if enabled). The Service Order Notes are associated with the reservation, so you can see the PIN information on the reservation info page.

  2. If we receive an update of a reservation we have 2 subcases:

    2.1. If the guest name or reservation date has changed, we update these fields and do not change the pin.

    2.2. If the resource has changed, which means the guest changed their accommodation, we delete the keyring and create a new one. For us this update means a new reservation. We do this because the pin we send is associated with the resource, not the reservation. We need to regenerate the pin, and to do this we recreate the whole keyring and then send the new pin to Mews.

  3. If we receive a notification that a reservation is deleted, we remove the keyring.

If someone makes a reservation, updates it or cancels it

In this case the Mews plugin automatically receives a notification via webhook and processes it.

WEBHOOKELEAOPEN MEWSPLUGINKEYRING1KEYRING2KEYRING3RESOURCEHAS GROUPMEWS APIADD PININFORMATION SENDSNOTIFICATION ABOUTRESERVATION CHECKS CREATES UPDATES REMOVES

If guest opens the door for the first time

In this case if your checkbox "Send first successful open event to Mews" is enabled, our door via the EleaOpen platform and the Mews plugin will try to send this event to Mews and start the reservation. In practice this means that the reservation state will change from "To check in" to "Checked in".

From Mews documentation:

Marks a reservation as Started (= checked in). Succeeds only if all starting conditions are met (the reservation has the Confirmed state, does not have start set to future, has an inspected room assigned etc).

DOOR OPENELEAOPENMEWSPLUGINMEWS APICONDITIONSARE METRESERVATIONSTATE CHANGED SENDS NOTIFICATIONFIRST TIME SUCCESS OPEN SENDS NOTIFICATION SEND START RESERVATION CHECKS IF TRUE

If accommodation changes state to clean (or inspected)

Every 15 minutes, our system checks your Mews accommodations and, if a accommodation in the Mews system gets the status "Clean" or "Inspected", adjusts keyring activation time so guests can enter earlier when the room is ready.

  • This applies only to accounts with the setting enabled in Mews Account settings: "Auto‑update check‑in time for clean rooms".
  • We only consider reservations starting within the next 12 hours.
  • Keys never activate earlier than 09:30 on the check‑in day.
  • We only move activation earlier, we never move it later.

There are several scenarios:

  1. Cleaning finished before 09:30 on the check‑in day

    Result: Keys activate at 09:30 (not earlier).

    Example: Check‑in today, cleaning at 08:00, keys activate at 09:30 (6.5h earlier than a standard 16:00 check‑in).

  2. Cleaning finished after 09:30 on the check‑in day and earlier than the current activation time

    Result: Keys activate shortly after the cleaning time (within the 15‑minute check cycle).

    Example: Check‑in today, cleaning at 11:00, keys activate around 11:00 (5h earlier than 16:00).

  3. Cleaning finished earlier than 12 hours before check‑in

    Result: No change yet, the system will reconsider within the last 12 hours before check‑in.

    Example: Check‑in in a month, cleaning today - no changes now.

MEWSRESOURSECHANGE STATETO CLEAN OR INSPECTEDELEAOPENMEWSPLUGINSTATECHANGEDTO CLEAN OR INSPECTEDKEYRING SENDS NOTIFICATIONVIA WEBHOOK CHECKS EVERY 15 MINS UPDATES

You can find this information either in the EleaOpen platform under keyring information or directly within the reservation in the Mews platform, if you have enabled "Send PIN information to Mews reservation" in your Account Settings.

Once this checkbox is enabled, a new page called Enterprise Tokens will appear. After synchronizing resources, you will see all your Enterprises along with fields to enter the tokens. Paste the token you obtained after installing the EleaSoluciones plugin in the Mews platform and save it.

If you have multiple Enterprises, you need to install the plugin for each one, copy the corresponding token, and paste it into our platform. These tokens are used only for sending PIN information. For all other actions, our plugin uses the token from your Account Settings.