When guests make a hotel booking they can book a spot in your restaurant at the same time. They can make a reservation while booking the room and your staff doesn't have to update anything manually. The integration between MEWS and Formitable helps you to work more efficiently and avoid double bookings
What will the integration do for you?
✅ Formitable will put products that are linked to bookings in MEWS in Formitable.
For example, when you have a booking in MEWS that includes breakfast and a 3-course dinner at your restaurant, these 2 separate reservations will show up in Formitable on the right dates, the right time, and in the right area of your restaurant.
✅ If a booking is adjusted in MEWS it will be updated in Formitable as well. For example, if you change or cancel a booking in MEWS, Formitable will change or cancel these bookings as well.
✅ In Formitable you can decide per Shift whether you want it to be possible to book them via MEWS. This way, you can create specific Tickets for the MEWS integration so they won't show up in your Formitable reservation widget for non-hotel guests.
✅ You can add a note to a booking in MEWS and that note will show up in Formitable as well. For example when someone has dietary restrictions.
⌛ When you add a reservation to MEWS or adjust something in MEWS it will take a maximum of 60 seconds before the update will show up in Formitable.
Important to know when using the MEWS integration
💡 MEWS doesn’t know if your restaurant in Formitable is full, so make sure you have enough room in your restaurant to avoid overbooking.
💡 There is currently no way for Formitable to know if a group booking (for example, two hotel rooms booked by two befriended couples) want to sit together at one table. Therefore, a group booking will be put into Formitable as two separate bookings on the same name. This is a problem that is known and we’re looking into a future solution.
💡 When you update the contact details or note of a booking in MEWS, they currently don’t perceive this as a full update of the booking. Therefore it’s not possible to pick these changes up by Formitable. If you have edited the contact details or notes in a booking in MEWS, please make sure to manually lock and unlock the booking in order for it to update in Formitable.
💡 Reservations that are placed in Formitable from MEWS don't receive emails from Formitable such as confirmation and reminder emails, in order to provide a better guest flow and avoid double emails.
💡 Check the status of MEWS via https://status.mews.li/. You can also register here, so that you receive e-mails when MEWS is not working properly. If it is indicated that there are problems with the OPEN API, it is possible that products do not come through properly in Formitable.
How to set up the integration with MEWS
First, you have to enable the integration in MEWS as well as in Formitable.
Installation 🔧
In MEWS, go to the Marketplace and install Formitable. An access token is given in MEWS, make sure to store it for later use in Formitable
In Formitable, go to Apps and install the MEWS integration
Once you installed the MEWS App in Formitable go to App Settings by clicking on the wheel icon at the top left
Enter the access token that you have saved from MEWS
Notifications 💬
At Notifications, you can determine for which actions you would like to receive a notification. You will always receive a notification if Formitable fails to place a booking from MEWS in Formitable (for example, if Formitable is fully booked). In addition, you can decide whether you want to receive a notification for:
...every successful reservation creation of a MEWS product
...every successful update of a reservation of a MEWS product
...every cancellation of a reservation of a MEWS product
At Customer Settings, you can decide if you want to synchronise customer data from Formitable to MEWS on the creation of a booking in Formitable. When a guest comes to eat at your restaurant without staying the night, the data from that guest will be sent to MEWS. So next time, when that guest books a night in your hotel, you know that they have been in your restaurant before.
❗However, at the moment when switched on, this will trigger an email from MEWS asking a guest for more personal information before their stay. Which doesn't make sense when someone only comes to eat at your restaurant, without staying the night. Since this is not the desired workflow we advise you to not activate this yet. We are working on improving this flow❗
Link Products between MEWS and Formitable 🔗
At Product Mappings between MEWS & FT, you can link your MEWS products to Formitable Tickets.
Formitable will put products that are linked to bookings in MEWS in Formitable. For example, when you have a hotel booking in MEWS with a breakfast product and a 3-course dinner attached, these products will show up in Formitable on the right dates and the right area of your restaurant, when you linked these products.
Click on Add to create a new Product Mapping.
Under Linked Product Name, fill in a name to represent your linked product.
Under MEWS/Product Service ID, fill in the ID of your MEWS product or service.
You can find the MEWS Product ID in the URL of the product in MEWS.
Under Formitable Product ID, fill in the ID of your Formitable Product.
You can find the Formitable Product ID in the Ticket that you are going to map. Go to Tickets > Select the Ticket you are going to map > find the Ticket ID at the bottom left corner.
💡 Make sure you use unique Tickets that are only used by the MEWS integration. For example, if you have a Ticket for a 3-course menu that you offer to hotel guests in a package and you also offer a 3-course menu to non-hotel guests which they can book directly through the Formitable widget, make sure you create two separate Tickets. For example, '3-course menu' to use in the Widget and '3-course menu MEWS' to use for the MEWS integration.
Only relevant for 'Per Person' or 'Once' MEWS products. Under Reservation Day/Night to book you can decide on which day you want to send a reservation from MEWS to Formitable. If you don't want to change this, just leave it empty. Otherwise, entering 1 means the day or night of arrival, entering 2 means the second day, etc.
Repeat these steps for all MEWS products that you want to link to Formitable. You can click on Add again to start another mapping.
Click Save Settings at the bottom when you're done mapping all Products.
Create a Shift for each Ticket that you are using with the MEWS integration
Finally, you have to make sure you create availability for all Tickets that you want to use for the MEWS integration. Creating (online) availability starts with connecting a Shift to a Ticket.
Go to Settings > Shifts and add a new Shift by clicking on the blue '+' at the top right. Select the Ticket you created for the MEWS integration and follow the steps to create a new Shift as per usual. ❗Under Channels, make sure you set the channel of the Shift to MEWS only and deselect all other Channels. This way, the Shift will only be used by MEWS and not show up in your Formitable widget.
Is it your first time creating a Shift? 📌 Read this article to learn how to create online availability and set up Shifts.
What's next?