Alumni

How Mews aims to revolutionise hotel technology?

An interview with the CEO of MEWS - By Julia Kobiolka

We would like to introduce you to Matthijs Welle, a Hotelschool The Hague graduate. Following an ambitious career with the Hilton group, he made the bold decision to redesign hotel property management systems. Developing the highly successful MEWS Hospitality Platform, which was recognised with multiple awards in 2024.

What did you do after graduating? 

After graduating, I joined the Hilton Elevator program, a fast-track graduate program that gets you into hotel general management positions. I was able to combine the program with my last internship. I went to London and South Africa for Hilton, which was phenomenal. It was 18 months of going through every job in a hotel. At the end of that, they offered me a job at the Hilton Prague, where I ran the food and beverage departments at an 800-bedroom hotel. I later moved to the front office and then into sales. I ran the whole sales department for the cluster, and afterwards, I moved on to regional sales for Eastern Europe. Every year with Hilton, I made a promotion, and they were very good to me. I've learned so much, and they kept pushing my career until that didn't excite me anymore. Once I finished hotel school, I thought I wanted to be a hotel manager. However, as I developed my skills, I started seeing that I didn't want to get stuck in one single box. I tried to just constantly grow. In a big hotel chain, you do have to go into a speciality, and it was slowing down my growth, which frustrated me to the point where I ended up leaving Hilton.

When did you discover your passion for starting a company?

I think it's been building up for a few years. I have always wanted to do something, but I always thought, what do I want to do? I read books about entrepreneurs who rethought the way of working throughout their companies, and this excited me. One of the first books I ever read was called Maverick, about this entrepreneur who basically took over the company from his father and then just turned it upside down. I love that idea of doing things very differently than how it's been done before. The thoughts had been shaping, but I really needed to find a partner who was a very different person but who could lure me away and say, let's take a risk; let's just do it. Until I was 30, I had taken zero risks in my life. Everything was, according to the book, very boring. Then Richard, the founder said, just take a jump. What are you going to lose? Honestly, when you think about it, I was 30 and had no kids and no mortgage. You can always go back to hotels if it doesn't work, but taking a risk like this could pay off very high dividends. It did in the end, so I got lucky.

How did Mews come to life, and what is its main idea?

It came to life because Richard, the founder of Mews, was building a hotel for his family. He was a project manager at the hotel and struggled with the current systems because he was trying to be the Apple of hotels, some of the most forward-technology thinking they had implemented. He told me he wasn't going to buy a reception desk. Whereas I just came out of migrating into Windows, and it was awful in hotels. The technology you see is just the most backwards legacy technology you can imagine. That became the point where we realised that we should build that. Let's build a property management solution. Sometimes, you shouldn't know how complex these things are when you go into these challenges because it's one of the most complex systems you can imagine in a hotel. When I quit Hilton, some of my very senior directors told me I was making a mistake and that I had no idea how difficult it was to build this system. I kept saying no, that it was fine, and that we could figure it out, but it was very difficult.

What obstacles have you encountered, and how did you overcome them?

We had infinite obstacles. We lacked investors who believed in what we were doing because every time we explained it, they said, "That sounds complex; why don't you just do an online check-in or something?" We struggled to raise money, and because we didn't have money, you don't get to build everything. The lack of funds forced us to make really good decisions along the way. Sometimes, some of the obstacles in the moment feel like they are impossible, but because of the obstacles, it makes you make better decisions. That's what happened to us because we didn't have money. What's the one thing people will care about that will have an impact? We ended up doing a number of the right things. Other obstacles in our industry came when we internationalised in Europe. We encountered various problems in different countries. How do you employ people in different countries and make the system ready to support German fiscalisation versus French fiscalisation? It's complex. Every time we run into a new country, we're like, oh, God, they've reinvented the wheel again regarding legislation locally. Those are really hard things in the very early days when you have no money. But all of them made us stronger.

How do you see the future of Mews? What are the targets set for it?

Honestly, take over the world. We're all stuck with this really old technology; however, customers are not. Every guest checks in with their smartphone, and the technology doesn't allow them to do that on their phone. So, somebody has to go and fix this. It's exciting to hear what's going on with AI today, but no one in our space is talking about actual applications. We all talk about AI, but not actual applications in the day-to-day life of hoteliers, and we're trying to shift into great new technology. We are trying to be the first to put it out there. Today, we cover less than 2% of the global industry. So we have infinite years to go ahead before we really liberate hoteliers and also just really change the way that people travel. I don't just want a system that makes it easier for employees to enter data. The way we think about it is why the employee is entering data in the first place. Why do they need a system? Maybe we can eliminate the system in its entirety if we can automate all of it. Hotel employees should be focused on the guest experience rather than "Hi, welcome to the hotel". Can I have your passport and your credit card?"." Here's your registration card, and here's a plastic key". It's just such a disjointed experience today.

What achievements are you most proud of?

We built something from nothing. Today, we have over a thousand employees, and I often stop and think about that. We've started in a place with no money and a dream, and we just know the problem we are solving. Many people will look at Google, Facebook and Apple and think, these companies are so big; why would I try and solve something? But it can be done with the right ambition, grit and resilience. You can honestly do anything. People often look at me and say, "You only did hotel school". "Didn't you have to do an MBA?". I'm like, no, I just learned along the way, and I have a growth mindset, and I think that's exciting. Hotelschool The Hague set me up for success because of the wide range of tools it gave me and working in groups. I didn't appreciate all the group work when I was at HTH because I'm such a nerd, and I thought if I was on my own, I could get better grades than when a group held me back. However, working in groups, I had to learn to navigate the complexities of humans. I now encounter topics that I feel I don't understand. However, I'm not ashamed to ask for help. I contact specialists to explain topics that come up repeatedly, where I feel inadequate.

What is your biggest failure, and what did you learn from it?

I regret that I was so set on my goals. I knew so well what I wanted to do. In hindsight, it isn't what I became. I was just like, I'm going to be a GM. That's what I'm going to do. That kept me on a path I could have gotten off sooner if I had been more open-minded about different outcomes. But because I'm so goal-oriented, I needed to set a goal that I didn't adjust to soon enough. So, as I started going up in the direction of GM, I realised this job was not exciting for me, and I should have taken action sooner. During my last year at Hilton, I was miserably unhappy. I should have realised that sooner. But because everyone tells you to set a goal and then work towards it. It just held me back in the end.

What would be your advice for students graduating in 2024?

I would say apply for a job you didn't plan to. Like most people, you will apply for the standard jobs. I encourage students to just go out of their way to take one interview with a company that excites them. I would never have applied for a company that Mews is today, a technology company, because I honestly didn't even think that was what I wanted. So, let's say that if you are going to apply for jobs, find one job that is different from the rest of them because it might surprise you.

What is your favourite book?

Unreasonable Hospitality

What was the last movie that you saw?

The idea of you

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

Morning person

What is your biggest dream in a few words?

Completely transforming travel

Name one thing on your bucket list.

Travel the world

Name one thing that you like to do in your free time.

Eating out