Our day at Mews Unfold 2026

This week we, Davy and Jill, travelled to Amsterdam to attend our third and fifth Mews Unfold. Ahead of the event we had asked Richard Valtr what this year's edition was really about. He talked about redefining the core, the idea that the boundaries between hotel systems are increasingly artificial and that the platform underneath needs to catch up. On Wednesday we went to find out ourselves and as every year, we were looking forward to the sessions, the innovations and the people we would meet. Walking up to the Muziekgebouw and seeing the Unfold branding up is always a great thing to see.

The day opened with coffee, an introduction and an unexpected laugh thanks to the interactive badges every attendee was wearing. Explaining how to pair the badges, the host told us to touch our neighbour's touch point, then caught himself and clarified that you should not actually touch it, but tap it. And if you still wanted to touch it, he added, ask for consent first.

For one of us the day carried an extra layer. After six months away from Hospitality Net this was a first event back, and walking into a room full of familiar faces felt a little like coming home. Guessing you know who this is about by now.

Creativity is a habit

The opening keynote was Duncan Wardle, former head of innovation and creativity at Disney, and the fastest speaker we have ever heard on a stage. Neither of us is usually a fan of interactive audience sessions, but this one won us over.

At one point we had to draw the person next to us in sixty seconds, without once looking at the paper. Sixty seconds and no looking down does not flatter anyone. We drew each other, and the results were about what you would expect. One was quietly destroyed on the spot. The other made it to LinkedIn, where Mews kindly called it a "good attempt." Picasso might have approved. The subject was less sure.

There was a serious point underneath the fun. Creativity, Wardle argued, is not something you either have or do not have, it is a habit. To get it back, act more like a child, stay curious and ask why instead of why not.

A day about adding

One phrase kept turning up on the slides: shaping high-performance hospitality. Most of the day pulled in that direction. More personalisation, more data, more experience, more revenue per guest, and above all more AI.

The AI thread ran through nearly every session, and rightly so. It is not something the industry can ignore any longer. The recurring promise was a hopeful one. AI will take the repetitive work off your team's plate so they can focus on the human part, welcoming guests, remembering names, creating the moments people remember. In their closing remarks, Mews summed it up as a simple promise: technology should handle the repetitive work so staff can spend their time with guests.

Judging by what was on show, this is a serious bet, not a slogan. But we did not leave entirely convinced, and this is where the two of us pulled apart a little. 

One of us keeps wondering whether the story suppliers tell us matches reality. Will AI really not replace jobs? And even if it does free up time, will that change the work ethic of a new generation, or give people the hospitality heart this industry needs? A system can take over a task. It cannot give someone a sense of welcome.

The other of us builds software for a living, and had a more specific thought. For fifteen years now, at every technology conference, someone tells the same story. You arrive at the desk of a hotel you have stayed in a dozen times, and the receptionist asks whether you have stayed here before. Yes, a dozen times. That information sits in nearly every property management system on the market, and has for years. Yet it came up again, in a room full of semantic layers, AI agents and autopilot pricing. You start to think the fix is not complicated. Recognise the guest by name at check-in, and put a returning guest front and centre on the screen. The reason it lingers is probably not technical at all. The data lives in the PMS, the booking arrives through a channel, and the welcome happens at a desk, and no single part of that chain quite owns the moment where they meet. That may be exactly where all this new intelligence can help, by joining those dots so the person at the desk simply knows. We listened to a full day of advanced releases, and the oldest and simplest frustration is the one we are most curious to see solved.

So one of us came away more hopeful, the other more sceptical, and we have decided to leave both in rather than pretend we agreed.

None of this is a complaint about Mews. The announcements were substantial, one of their biggest sets in years, and worth following closely. We will cover the launches and partnerships properly in a separate piece, but if you run a property, the one we would watch first is the new guest messaging and automation layer, which is the kind of thing that quietly changes a front desk's day rather than sitting on a roadmap.

The session we wish there were more of

Our favourite hour was the one where two people challenged each other. Halima Aziz of Zedwell Hotels took the stage and, gently but firmly, took apart most of what the day had been celebrating. The industry, she argued, is obsessed with adding, more amenities, more storytelling, more layers between the guest and what they actually booked, which is a good night's sleep. Her answer runs the other way. Strip the room back to what people will pay for, central location, a good bed, privacy and safety, and sell it at a price that lets a normal person afford a night in an expensive city. Thirty pounds a night at Piccadilly Circus, in windowless rooms built into spaces other hotels cannot use. Not luxury, she said, but value, and dignity. Sometimes the greatest luxury is simplicity.

Bashar Wali sat opposite her and pushed back on all of it, the commoditisation, the race to the bottom, the over-tourism. It was honest and to the point, two sharp people challenging each other in front of the room instead of agreeing politely. We wish there were more sessions like it.

A container in Brazil

The session that stayed with us longest was the quietest. Jan van Hövell of KLABU spoke about building sports clubhouses in refugee camps. The numbers are hard to sit with. There are 120 million people displaced from their homes, and the average stay in a camp is not two or five years but twenty-one. Children are born in them and grow up in them.

KLABU's answer starts with a shipping container, a place where people can borrow a football, watch the Champions League on a screen at night, and wear a shirt with some pride. It is hospitality at its oldest meaning, making someone feel welcome when they have nowhere else to be. After a day spent at the most expensive end of the business, the most moving thing in the room was a man explaining what belonging costs when you have almost nothing. One euro a month gives one person access.

We spend our days thinking about expensive rooms and guest experience, and here was hospitality at its most basic, and its most human. Whatever the two of us made of the rest of the day, we walked out of that session agreeing on something.

Want to support KLABU? You can become a member for one euro a month.

The party

As in previous years, the day ended with the after party. There was good food, champagne, a steady supply of cocktails (mocktails for one of us), a DJ and plenty of dancing, with Richard's and Danica's moves on the floor not likely to be forgotten quickly. It was the best kind of networking, a chance to meet new people and catch up with the ones we already know.

None of this happens by itself. Katie Doerr, Shreya Ganapathy and the rest of the team delivered something exceptional and deserve the credit coming their way. Mews Unfold gets the important things right, the technology, the people in the room, and an instinct for the conversations this industry needs to have right now.

A long day, but a good one. See you next year. And for those who stayed until the very end: don't forget Richard's gift.