Billing model
Kotao
Platform subscription with payments, PMS, POS, storefront, and CRM in one system.
Mews
~€8-15/room/month (PMS) + Mews Payments tiered fees + per-integration marketplace costs.
COMPARE
Kotao vs Mews.
EU-headquartered, API-first PMS: the modern reference for hotel and hostel property management.
Pricing snapshot
Per-room pricing, ~€8-15/room/month depending on tier (Mews Pro, Mews Enterprise). Mews Payments adds card processing on separate, region-dependent fees. Channel manager included; many marketplace integrations billed per-app. (As of 2026-05.)
www.mews.com (opens in new tab)At a glance
What changes in day-to-day operation.
This comparison looks at Mews less as an abstract feature list and more as a decision for teams that need sales, guests, bookings, payments, inventory, and reporting to work together.
POS / front-of-house
Kotao
Bundled, multi-vertical: restaurant POS and retail till in the same product.
Mews
Optional Mews POS or third-party POS via marketplace (Lightspeed, Square, others).
Property management
Kotao
Bundled: solid PMS core; Mews-class depth at the high end on the roadmap.
Mews
PMS-first product: deepest hotel-specific feature set, twelve-plus years of refinement.
CRM + customer record
Kotao
Bundled: unified across PMS, restaurant, retail, online (guest = diner = customer).
Mews
Rich guest profiles inside the PMS; broader marketing and CRM via integrations.
01
The pitch
Mews launched in Prague in 2012 with a clear thesis: replace legacy on-prem hotel PMS with a modern, cloud-native, API-first platform. More than a decade later, Mews powers thousands of hotels worldwide, from boutique independents to international chains, and has raised more than $110M across multiple funding rounds. The product is hospitality-shaped through and through.
Mews is genuinely best-in-class at hotel PMS. Twelve-plus years of operator feedback have refined housekeeping workflows, the channel manager and OTA integrations, group reservations, allotments, rate parity management, and a hospitality-tuned marketplace of revenue-management, mobile-key, and in-room-entertainment partners. For pure-hotel operators whose primary need is deep, vendor-mature property management, Mews is the right answer.
02
Where Kotao wins
- 01
PMS is one piece of a larger platform.
Mews is PMS-first: POS, retail, and commerce sit outside the core product or in third-party marketplace integrations. Kotao runs PMS, restaurant POS, retail till, storefront, CRM, ERP, and BTP behind one customer record. If your property has a restaurant, a spa, a shop, or events alongside the rooms, Kotao gives you the surrounding surfaces as part of the same platform, not as a second vendor to integrate.
- 02
One customer record across hospitality and retail.
A guest who checks into the hotel, eats breakfast in the restaurant, books a spa treatment, and buys a souvenir from the shop is the same customer everywhere in Kotao: one bill, one loyalty record, one company. Mews holds rich guest profiles inside the PMS, but the broader CRM, marketing, and retail customer view depends on integrations and external systems.
- 03
Payments live beside the operation, not outside it.
Mews Payments uses tiered, region-dependent rates that vary by card type, channel, and acquirer. Kotao Payments keeps hotel, restaurant, retail, and online settlement in the same operational record so finance is not stitching exports together.
- 04
One platform, one bill.
Mews splits the PMS subscription, Mews Payments processing fees, and Mews Marketplace per-app costs across separate billing relationships. Kotao bundles every surface a property operator needs behind a single subscription, a single login, and a single invoice.
03
Where they're stronger
- 01
Deepest hotel-specific PMS features.
Mews has spent twelve-plus years refining housekeeping workflows, group-reservation flows, allotments and inventory holds, rate parity management across distribution channels, and a virtual-concierge layer. If a hotel wants pure-hotel PMS depth, Mews is the right answer. Kotao's PMS is a solid core, strong on the day-to-day fundamentals, and we're investing heavily in catching up at the high end, but we don't claim parity with Mews's twelve-year depth today.
- 02
Channel manager and OTA integrations built in.
Mews ships native, deeply tuned integrations with Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, and the rest of the OTA stack, plus rate parity tooling and channel-by-channel inventory management. Kotao supports OTA distribution through partner integrations; the depth is shallower than what Mews has matured over a decade.
- 03
Hospitality marketplace breadth.
Mews's API-first architecture and large marketplace of hospitality-specific integrations are real and broad: revenue management systems, mobile keys, lock systems, in-room entertainment, guest messaging. Kotao's marketplace is launching with curated partners.
- 04
Hospitality-tuned reporting and KPIs.
RevPAR, ADR, occupancy, segmented by source channel, room type, and rate plan, using hotel-industry-standard definitions, are first-class in Mews. Kotao reports the same metrics today, but the depth and segmentation flexibility tuned by years of hotel-operator feedback are still narrower.
- 05
Hospitality brand recognition and installed base.
Thousands of hotels run on Mews, including some major chains. When hotel general managers ask peers "who do I use for PMS?", Mews is one of the first answers, and that word-of-mouth carries real weight in hospitality.
04
Who should pick which
Pick Mews if:
you operate a pure-hotel business and need PMS depth from a mature, vendor-proven platform; your property doesn't have meaningful POS, retail, or commerce needs alongside the rooms, or you already run those on separate, well-integrated systems; you depend on a specific OTA or hospitality-marketplace integration; or you need hotel-industry-standard RevPAR/ADR/occupancy reporting tuned by years of hotelier feedback.
Pick Kotao if:
your property has restaurants, retail, a spa, events, or a webshop alongside the rooms, and you want one customer record, one platform, and one bill across all of them; you operate a multi-vertical hospitality group and want POS, PMS, CRM, and storefront on one customer record; you want payment and payout context connected to the guest profile; or you're tired of reconciling separate bills for the PMS, the payments processor, and the marketplace add-ons.
Feature matrix
Side by side.
| What you get | Kotao | Mews |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Platform subscription with payments, PMS, POS, storefront, and CRM in one system. | ~€8-15/room/month (PMS) + Mews Payments tiered fees + per-integration marketplace costs. |
| POS / front-of-house | Bundled, multi-vertical: restaurant POS and retail till in the same product. | Optional Mews POS or third-party POS via marketplace (Lightspeed, Square, others). |
| Property management | Bundled: solid PMS core; Mews-class depth at the high end on the roadmap. | PMS-first product: deepest hotel-specific feature set, twelve-plus years of refinement. |
| CRM + customer record | Bundled: unified across PMS, restaurant, retail, online (guest = diner = customer). | Rich guest profiles inside the PMS; broader marketing and CRM via integrations. |
| Storefront + commerce | Bundled storefront: gift cards, vouchers, retail e-commerce, shared inventory + customer. | Not in scope for general commerce. |
| Payments | Kotao Payments: bundled, reconciled with operations. | Mews Payments: tiered fees, region- and acquirer-dependent. |
| Regional hosting + GDPR controls | Yes. Global data centres with data-residency controls. GDPR by design. | Yes. Czech Republic-headquartered with a regional data-residency posture, GDPR-native. |
Comparisons are written by Kotao and reflect our understanding of public information at the time of writing. We update them as products change. Found something off? Email comparisons@kotao.com.
Demo guide
Questions that reveal fit.
The best demo is concrete. Bring real workflows, data, locations, fee models, and responsibilities, not just a wishlist.
Talk to us- 01 Which workflows must go live on day one, and which can follow later?
- 02 Which existing data should move: customers, items, bookings, rooms, payments, or staff?
- 03 Which teams need separate permissions, approvals, exports, and audit trails?
- 04 Which hardware, payment terminals, domains, mailboxes, and integrations should keep running?
Pilot before big bang
Start with one location, one revenue center, or one clear workflow. That makes the decision measurable before the whole operation moves.
Data first
Decide early which customer, product, booking, and payment records need to be clean for reporting and automation.
Bring teams along
Front office, back office, finance, and marketing evaluate software differently. A good rollout shows each role the direct benefit.
Run the till. Run the books. Run the team.
POS, bookings, payments, inventory, payroll, website, reporting. One product. One bill. No plugin chain to maintain.