Mews is a cloud property management system used by hotels, hostels and apartment operators. Connecting it to ChatLab lets your chatbot answer questions about rooms, availability, prices and existing reservations from your live Mews data instead of from static text you have to keep updating.
Note: The Mews connection is set up for you by the ChatLab team, and it needs a plan that includes the hotel and travel integrations. The Mews tile in the Connect tab and the Mews actions in Settings > Actions are visible to the ChatLab team only, so you will not find them in your own account. This article shows what gets configured on your chatbot and what each setting does.
What the integration provides
Once connected, the chatbot gets four AI actions.
Mews - get rooms - lists all room categories available in the hotel with descriptions, bed counts and images.
Mews - find available rooms - the visitor gives a check-in and check-out date and the number of adult guests, and the chatbot returns the available room categories with pricing.
Mews - check room availability - the visitor asks about one specific room category, and the chatbot checks its availability and pricing for the requested dates and guest count.
Mews - get reservation - retrieves reservation details by reservation ID or confirmation number, and returns the room category, check-in and check-out dates, guest count and status. This lets guests who ask "what is my booking?" get an answer straight in the chat.
Dates are understood from natural language, so a visitor can write "next weekend" or "12-15 June" rather than a strict date format.
How the setup works
Unlike most ChatLab integrations, the Mews connection starts in the Mews Marketplace, not in the ChatLab admin panel:
- In the Mews Marketplace, find ChatLab - AI Concierge for Hotels and grant it access to your property.
- Mews then sends the connection details for your property - including the property's Access Token - directly to ChatLab as the integration partner. You do not generate the token yourself; each property in Mews has its own Access Token, and it reaches you through ChatLab.
- The ChatLab team contacts you to finish the setup. You create an account on chatlab.com, verify your email and pick a plan, and ChatLab completes the configuration: the chatbot is created, connected to your Mews property, trained on your website content and configured for you.
If you have not worked with ChatLab chatbots before, How to create your first ChatLab chatbot explains the basics of what a chatbot is made of.
The sections below show what ChatLab configures on your chatbot and what each setting controls, so you know what your Mews data is used for and what to ask support to change.
What the connection looks like
The Mews integration lives on the Connect tab of your chatbot, as one of the integration tiles:
Opening the tile shows the Mews Integration form that ChatLab fills in for you:
Connection settings explained
- Access Token - the token Mews issued for your property when you granted ChatLab access in the Mews Marketplace. Each property in Mews has its own Access Token. The field is masked; click the eye icon to reveal what you typed. Once the integration is connected you can leave this field empty when saving changes - the previously saved token is kept, so you can adjust the other settings without re-entering it.
- Load Services - fetches the list of services from your Mews property using the Access Token. After loading, a Service dropdown appears where you select the accommodation service the chatbot should use - properties may have multiple services (for example rooms, parking, spa). If you leave it on Auto-detect (first available), the first available accommodation service is used.
- Booking URL - the direct booking URL for your property. The chatbot gives this link to guests when they want to book a room. Without it, the chatbot still answers about rooms and availability, it just cannot point guests to your booking page.
- Language - the language for room names and descriptions returned by Mews. The default, Property default, uses your property's default language.
Click Connect to save. ChatLab immediately runs a test call against your Mews property. If the token is invalid or the property cannot be read, the integration is switched back off and the error is shown, so a broken connection is never left half enabled. After a successful connection the button changes to Update Chatbot and a Disconnect button appears.
Review the Mews actions
Connecting switches all four Mews actions on, so the chatbot is ready to answer immediately. They live in Settings > Actions, in the Mews Actions group:
- Mews - get rooms - default action label "Getting rooms..."
- Mews - find available rooms - default action label "Searching available rooms..."
- Mews - check room availability - default action label "Checking room availability..."
- Mews - get reservation - default action label "Looking up reservation..."
The screenshot above shows the group before the integration is connected: the four actions are already listed, but marked Not connected and unavailable to the chatbot. They switch on automatically once the connection is made.
For each action ChatLab can adjust:
- Action Label - the short message the visitor sees in the chat while the action runs.
- Instructions - what the action does, which the AI uses to decide when to call it.
- User Instructions - your own rules on top of that, for example asking for the number of guests before searching, or mentioning your minimum stay.
An individual action can also be switched off if you do not want it. For example, the room list and the availability search can stay on while the reservation lookup is turned off. Tell support which behaviour you want.
Test it
Open your chatbot and try questions that map to each action:
- "What rooms do you have?" - triggers Mews - get rooms
- "What is free from 12 to 15 June for 2 adults?" - triggers Mews - find available rooms
- "Is the Deluxe Suite free next weekend?" - triggers Mews - check room availability
- "Can you check my reservation ABC123?" - triggers Mews - get reservation
Check that the room names and prices match your Mews data, and that the chatbot hands out your booking URL when a guest is ready to book.
Managing the integration
Updating settings - the Service, Booking URL and Language can be changed at any time without a new Access Token. Ask support and we will update them on your chatbot.
Disconnecting - ask support to disconnect the integration. The four Mews actions stop being available to the chatbot. It can be connected again later with the same Access Token.
Tips
- Keep training your bot on your website content. The Mews actions cover rooms, dates, prices and reservations; everything else a guest asks about (breakfast, parking, check-in hours, pets) comes from your knowledge base. See Training your chatbot - basics and limits.
- Put booking rules such as minimum stay or a deposit policy into the action's user instructions, so the chatbot mentions them together with availability instead of leaving the guest to find out at checkout.
- Add suggested questions like "Check availability" or "Show rooms" so visitors discover what the chatbot can do.
- Each answer that calls a Mews action uses message credits like any other chatbot reply. See What is a message credit.