Migrating from Mews to Guest Talk — a three-week playbook.
This is the playbook the Talkguest migration team runs when a Portuguese boutique moves off Mews. Twenty-one working days, one named migration engineer, marketplace app inventory reconciled, deposit continuity guaranteed, factura sequence unbroken.
The shape of the property and the shape of the migration
This playbook assumes an independent Portuguese boutique currently on Mews — typically between 20 and 120 keys, five to fifteen active marketplace apps on the Mews side (a WhatsApp connector, an upsell engine, a smart-lock integration, a POS integration, a reputation tool, and so on), and a Portuguese factura setup that runs either through a Mews-side integration or through the property's own accountant. Deposit handling on Mews is typically native and tightly integrated with the payment terminal or PSP — the migration handles this deliberately, not by default.
The playbook uses a three-week window rather than a two-week window because the marketplace-app inventory adds real steps: each app has to be identified, its data volume assessed, its cutover date agreed, and its replacement in Talkguest configured. A property on Mews with only three marketplace apps and no smart-lock integration can compress the plan to fourteen working days; a group of two Mews properties with fifteen marketplace apps between them may need to extend to twenty-eight working days to run the migration in two phases.
Three weeks, in order
- Week 1, day 1 — Kick-off. Migration engineer, general manager, revenue manager if applicable, and the property's accountant. Current-state stack documented in full: Mews plan, active modules, list of marketplace apps with data volumes, PSP configuration, factura setup, WhatsApp status, smart-lock integration status.
- Week 1, day 2 — Data export from Mews. Guest CRM exported (up to five years), reservations (24 months by default), rate plans and room types, OTA property IDs and their rate-plan mapping, deposit records, folio balances, marketplace-app configuration snapshots.
- Week 1, day 3 — Marketplace app inventory. Every marketplace app enumerated: what it does, how much data it holds, whether Talkguest replaces it natively, whether it stays as an API integration, whether it retires. Decisions countersigned by the general manager. This is the day that catches groups by surprise if it is skipped.
- Week 1, day 4 — Talkguest tenant provisioned. Property record created, users invited, rooms mapped, VAT profiles configured, factura series carried from AT registration, PSP configured. Native modules turned on: Guest Messaging, Channel Manager, Direct Booking Engine, Housekeeping.
- Week 1, day 5 — Guest CRM load. Historic guest profiles loaded with preferences, allergies and lifetime value pre-computed. Duplicate detection runs.
- Week 2, day 6 — Reservation load, historic. The 24-month historic reservations loaded read-only for guest-history search.
- Week 2, day 7 — Reservation load, upcoming. Every upcoming reservation loaded and cross-checked one by one against Mews. Discrepancies resolved and countersigned.
- Week 2, day 8 — Deposit continuity. Pre-authorised deposits held by Mews's PSP are enumerated. Deposits held on cards that will continue on the same PSP through Talkguest are re-authorised on Talkguest and released on Mews. Deposits held on a Mews-specific PSP that will not continue post-cutover are refunded via Mews and re-taken via Talkguest closer to arrival. Accountant signs off on the reconciliation.
- Week 2, day 9 — OTA re-mapping. Booking, Expedia, Airbnb, Google Hotels and any other active OTAs re-mapped in Talkguest. Rate plans and cancellation policies aligned. No live connection yet.
- Week 2, day 10 — WhatsApp setup. WhatsApp Business API number ported or provisioned. Templates loaded in every language the property serves. End-to-end tested on a dummy reservation.
- Week 3, day 11 — Smart-lock integration cutover. If the property runs a smart-lock system, the integration is moved from Mews to Talkguest. Door codes for existing reservations verified.
- Week 3, day 12 — Marketplace app cutover. Apps that are staying as API integrations are connected to Talkguest. Apps that are retiring are switched off on the Mews side. Historic data from retired apps is imported to Talkguest as an audit trail.
- Week 3, day 13 — Cross-check pass two. Every reservation, every folio, every deposit, every OTA rate, every marketplace app, verified end-to-end. Final go/no-go decision.
- Week 3, day 14 — Channel-manager cutover afternoon. 14:00 to 18:00 Lisbon time, OTAs switched from Mews to Talkguest. Rates and inventory push confirmed. A small test booking placed and traced end-to-end.
- Week 3, day 15 — Go-live. Talkguest becomes master of record. Mews moves to read-only. WhatsApp Business API becomes live for guest conversations. Migration engineer on the property or on a permanent Zoom bridge until end of day.
Three things that catch first-time migrators
Marketplace app sprawl. Mews' marketplace is a strength of the platform, and a boutique that has been on Mews for two years typically has more apps active than the general manager remembers. Day 3's inventory pass surfaces a POS integration nobody uses any more, an upsell tool that stopped producing revenue in Q3, a reputation add-on that duplicates a native Talkguest feature. The migration is a good moment to retire what is not earning its keep.
Deposit reconciliation is a real event. Mews' deposit handling is elegant and tightly integrated with its PSP. When the PSP changes at cutover, deposits already held need to be moved deliberately. The migration engineer produces a spreadsheet of every held deposit, the accountant signs off on the reconciliation plan, and the transition happens in a single afternoon on day 8. Skipping this step causes chargeback exposure on arrivals in the first week post-cutover.
Room type consolidation. Mews properties often carry more room types than they operate — a legacy of the platform's flexibility. Talkguest's model prefers a smaller number of room types with rate-plan variants underneath. The migration engineer proposes a consolidation at day 4; the general manager signs off. Historic reservations are mapped to the consolidated model so that guest-history search still works.
The two weeks after cutover
The migration engineer stays on the account for fourteen working days post-go-live. During this window they run a daily check-in, watch for irregularities, and resolve edge cases. Typical day-16-plus surprises: a Booking VCC lands on an unmapped rate plan, a factura where the VAT rate needs an override for an EU-VAT-registered corporate, a WhatsApp template that needs a small edit because the parking situation changed, a marketplace-app integration that is passing data to Talkguest but not in the shape Talkguest expected.
At day 29 the migration engineer runs a final review with the general manager and the accountant, walks through the first monthly SAF-T (PT) export, and hands the account to Talkguest's standard support queue.
Read the Casa do Rio Hostels case study for a multi-property migration and the Talkguest vs Mews comparison for a fair read on the platform choice. Ready to start? Head to get access.