Blink and you’ll miss it. That’s how working in hospitality feels sometimes, such is the pace of our industry. There often isn’t time to pause and reflect, because there are always more guests to delight, more areas in which to innovate.
Nevertheless, the end of the year presents the perfect opportunity to carve out a few moments to do exactly that, and it turns out that 2024 has been a huge one in the Mews universe. This article provides a quick recap of some of the year’s highlights, including some things you might have missed – or forgotten.
It’s important to preface this by emphasizing that we don’t take your support for granted. Our community of hoteliers and tech partners is what fuels our mission and keeps us striving for new heights. So thank you to everyone who has come along for the ride.
And on a personal note, it makes me so proud to see all the incredible efforts of our teams reflected in these successes.
We had another year of stellar growth
Mews continues to go from strength to strength. As you know, I love data, and looking at the numbers makes for happy reading. Our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) rose by 51% from November 2023 to November 2024, and Mews has processed over €10 billion in payments so far this year.
We raised $110 million in additional funding to accelerate this growth, which helped us reach a significant milestone: a valuation of over $1.2 billion. This meant we could officially call our company a unicorn, but more importantly gave us the fuel to deliver on some really ambitious plans.
Here’s me and Richard talking about how we plan to use the funding.
We welcomed thousands of remarkable new hoteliers
Without forward-thinking hoteliers, Mews wouldn’t exist. It was a real pleasure to onboard thousands more customers to the Mews platform over the course of the year, which is also a huge credit to our amazing onboarding team.
The diversity of hotels is something I’m really proud of, because it reflects the platform’s agility and scalability. For instance, on one side of the scale, we became certified PMS partners for huge brands like BWH Hotels and Small Luxury Hotels of the World™, and completed our rollout across the full portfolio of 230 Strawberry hotels.
Plenty of innovative and ambitious mid-scale brands began digital transformations with Mews at its heart. In the US, the likes of Lark Hotels and Staypineapple made the move, while in Europe, big names including Marston’s, Zenitude Hôtel-Résidences and Bastion Hotels embraced hotel automation.
And we saw many independent hotels celebrate some incredible successes, particularly around operational efficiency and improvements to the guest and staff experience. There are some of my success story highlights from the year:
We said hello to new colleagues
Mews began the year with 934 talented employees. At the time of writing, that number stands at 1217, so it’s been another strong year of hiring.
The Mews Ventures team has also been very busy, shepherding four major acquisitions to completion. Here’s a reminder of each, with an explainer from Richard about why they happened:
We delighted hoteliers with lots of new features
Because Mews is cloud-native, it means we can roll out new releases and feature updates regularly and without disruption. In fact, we typically deploy several updates every week.
I’m not going to run through every platform improvement we made in 2024 (you can scroll through our release notes if you have the time), but there are several major announcements worth shouting about:
We made waves at events all over the world
Mews has developed a bit of a reputation for events. When we turn up, we really turn up, and there have been some truly eye-catching stands and design this year. Hoteliers were encouraged to Dream Big with what they can achieve with Mews, and this was reflected in our dreamy stand design at events like EquipHotel Paris. Or how about our beautiful Mews Match tour bus?
The event highlight of the year was Unfold 2024, an annual industry forum curated by Mews. Hosted at the stunning Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, it was the biggest Unfold ever, with 700 hoteliers attending presentations, breakouts, workshop sessions and more. It was such an inspiring event, and we can’t wait to go again in 2025.
We’re going to need a bigger trophy cabinet
None of us got into hospitality to win prizes, but it’s gratifying nevertheless to be recognized by peers and industry experts for all the hard work we put in. 2024 was a particularly successful year when it comes to awards; at the risk of being immodest, here’s everything we won:
Here’s to an even more remarkable 2025
None of this would have been possible without the hard work of our entire team, the collaboration with our tech partners, and the trust of our hoteliers. So thank you, again, to everyone.
Let’s work together to make 2025 an even more remarkable year.
