MEWS JUST LAID OFF 15% OF ITS STAFF AND SAID THE JOBS BELONG TO AN ERA THAT IS ENDING Who they are: a hotel software unicorn. The bigger plan: stop just selling software and become an AI service provider that absorbs hotel work like revenue management and procurement. Founded in Prague by Richard Valtr, Mews runs the front desk and payments for more than 15,000 hotels worldwide. It is the modern challenger to Oracle's legacy Opera system, and it just raised $300 million, partly to build AI agents. Why the cuts: Valtr is not hiding behind a euphemism. He says AI made the roles obsolete. Mews used to run specialist teams that passed work from one function to the next. With AI, he says, "a singular employee can do so, so much more," and the eliminated jobs were "built for an era that is ceasing to exist." About 170 roles go, across all teams and geographies, in the company's deepest restructuring since the pandemic. Customer-facing jobs are largely spared. The bigger plan: stop just selling software and become an AI service provider that absorbs hotel work like revenue management and procurement. The pattern is spreading across travel tech. Expedia and Amex GBT have cut on the same logic. Raise for AI, restructure the humans.