A few things worth knowing about this week: web chat is available on every account, guests can now get a check-out link the same way they get a check-in link, and AI Assist has started listening to your phone calls.

Web chat on your own website

Drop a small script on your site and visitors can start a conversation without picking up the phone. Those conversations land in the same shared inbox as your calls and texts — same thread, same team, no second tool to check.

• Room search, right in the chat — a visitor asking about availability gets real rooms back with photos, multiple rates, and a direct booking link with accurate pricing, so they can go from question to reservation without ever leaving the conversation. Rates are the ones your Mews booking engine would quote

• A kill switch — turn the widget off from Hello Hotel without touching your website

• AI mode — visitors open straight into a conversation with an AI that answers from your knowledge base. A “Talk to a human” option is always there, and becomes prominent the moment the AI can’t answer something

• Sessions stay open for 24 hours and a returning visitor can pick up where they left off for up to 7 days

One thing to be clear about: web chat AI mode is the only place in Hello Hotel where the AI replies to someone on its own. In the shared inbox, a person still reviews, edits, and sends every message.

Guest check-out links

There’s now a check-out link variable to go with the check-in link. Use it in the composer, in a snippet, or in an automation.

• The guest’s session is created when they tap the link, not when you send the message — so it still works in a snippet that’s been sitting in your library for weeks

• The link stops working 24 hours after departure

• Nothing to switch on; Mews decides which reservations are eligible

Long texts stop before they send

A text that’s too long for the carrier now gets caught at the moment you press send. Your draft stays in the composer, and the warning tells you how long the message is against the limit — instead of the message landing in the thread as a failed bubble.

• The cap is roughly 1,530 characters, and drops to about 670 as soon as you add an emoji — the same message can hit the limit at very different lengths depending on what’s in it

• Photos and group threads are exempt; those go out as MMS

AI Assist now hears your calls

Calls and voicemails from the last seven days are part of the conversation AI Assist reads, in order alongside the texts.

• If someone called about rates and your team said “I’ll text those over,” the draft contains the actual rates instead of repeating the promise

• Just hung up and the summary isn’t ready? It falls back to the call transcript, so the draft is useful immediately

Clearer message failures

When a text fails because the number isn’t 10DLC registered yet, the message now says so and points you at Settings → Compliance — rather than leaving you to retry something that can’t succeed until registration clears.

Tag automations fire however you add the tag

Your guest-tag-added automations now trigger whether the tag comes from the contact detail panel, from bulk tagging on the contacts screen, or from Zapier.