✂️ Mews cuts 15% of its staff and Pudu builds a fully robotic hotel

Welcome to RemoteHotelier!

I’m writing this express edition from Osaka. When you read this, I’ll hopefully be surrounded by deer in Nara.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞️ + 5 main news

🚀 + 5 product updates

🤝 + 3 new deals & partnerships

✂️ Mews cuts 15% of its workforce as they focus resources toward building an “AI native” hospitality operating system, with customer facing roles largely unaffected. The company says it’s still growing quickly and continues hiring for select roles despite the restructuring, as mentioned in this pivot to an AI native future.

🔧 Radisson launches a new AI price matching tool that detects lower public rates on OTAs and instantly matches them on its website, no claims or screenshots needed. It replaces the traditional best rate guarantee, which usually depends on guests filing a claim after booking. The feature already checks rates across Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda and others.

🏠 Ireland plans to ban newly built rural homes from operating as STR for at least 10 years. The rule would attach as a planning permission condition, aimed at protecting rural housing supply. It’s part of a wider push to regulate the short-term rental sector.

⚖️ Hopper agrees to pay $35 million to settle FTC claims that it used deceptive “dark patterns” to hide fees and mislead guests about its VIP Support and Price Freeze. The company must now clearly disclose all fees before checkout. It’s the latest in a string of FTC settlements over hidden travel fees, following similar cases against StubHub and Booking Holdings.

🤖 Pudu Robotics plans to build a 44 room “full scenario robot serviced” hotel in Shenzhen, with a public pilot in late 2026 and full opening in 2027, where robots handle check in, room deliveries, cleaning, luggage transport, and food service. The concept uses a shared AI platform (PuduFM 1.0 and PuduAgent) to coordinate multiple robot types as one connected operating system instead of standalone task bots, aiming to reduce repetitive labor and improve consistency across the property. You can read more about this here: fully robot operated hotel project.

🆕 Vibe launches an MCP server that lets corporate customers search, book and manage trips directly through ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Bookings stay tied to the travel management company’s approved content, suppliers and policies, so control doesn’t shift away from the TMC. ITG Business Travel is the first client live with the integration.

🆕 Navan becomes the first travel management company to integrate directly with Hilton’s Central Reservation System, giving corporate customers real-time rates, availability and booking through Hilton’s own APIs. The tie-up also pipes Hilton’s property content straight into Navan’s platform. No launch date has been set yet.

🆕 TG Studio, a new AI planning platform from TG Group and Treedis, lets hotel developers build and edit digital mockups of guestrooms and public spaces before construction starts. Users can swap finishes, furniture and lighting in real time while seeing the budget impact of each choice. It’s already in pilot for several luxury hotel developments.

🆕 Marriott outspent every hotel brand on national TV in the first half of 2026, topping $40 million. But Airbnb still won the World Cup attention battle, pulling 237 million impressions from its lead ad versus Marriott’s 113 million.

🆕 SiteMinder’s mid-year Hotel Booking Trends report finds some markets leading on bookings, others on pricing, and others on shorter stays. The report covers bookings across 22 key markets

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🤝 Besty AI raises a $3.75 million seed round to expand its guest service and operations automation platform for short-term rental operators. The company now serves more than 300 customers and 30,000 properties across 25 countries. It plans to use the funding to pursue larger enterprise clients.

🤝 Affitti Brevi Italia partners with Aeve AI to put routine guest messaging on autopilot across its 1,000-plus Italian apartments. Aeve integrates directly with Guesty and replies in the operator’s own voice, escalating anything unusual to a manager by WhatsApp or email.

🤝 TrustYou partners with TravelMAX to become its exclusive distributor across North Cyprus, bringing TrustYou’s guest experience, customer data and AI agent tools to hotels in the region. The deal is part of TravelMAX’s push to expand into hospitality technology distribution more broadly.

That’s all for today, thank you for reading. I’ll still be in Japan next week, so you can expect a similar format for the next newsletter.

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See you next week!
Jose