Calistoga Spa Hot Springs moves to Mews after 20 years on one system

Calistoga Spa Hot Springs, a 57-room independent resort in California's Napa Valley, has replaced a property management system it had run for two decades with Mews. Around half of arriving guests now check in online.

Mews announced the switch on 17 September 2026.

The property

Calistoga Spa Hot Springs is a geothermal mineral springs resort with 57 guest rooms, four outdoor mineral pools, volcanic ash mud baths and a fitness centre. It has been held by the same ownership group since the 1960s, which is worth noting because a 20-year run on one system usually reflects that kind of continuity rather than inertia alone.

The property has taken the Mews property management system, the Mews revenue management system and Flexkeeping for housekeeping. Guest Messaging is due to launch there next.

What changed operationally

The figure Mews leads with is that roughly 50% of arriving guests now check in online. For an independent resort of this size that is a meaningful number, and it is the kind of change that shows up at the front desk rather than in a report.

Guests can also pre-order amenities before arrival, with welcome wine and extended pool passes given as examples. For a spa property where the pools are the reason people come, moving pool access into the pre-arrival flow is a sensible piece of revenue capture.

The part worth reading twice

The most useful detail in this announcement is about onboarding, and it cuts slightly against the vendor's own positioning.

General manager Mike Lennon chose to pay for Mews onboarding specialists to be physically on site rather than run the implementation remotely. "Having them on-site with our front desk and housekeeping teams instead of over a screen made a huge difference," he said. "It's an additional cost, but it was well worth it."

Michael Coscetta, president of Mews, acknowledged the tension directly. "Mews is built so operators can get up and running fast on their own, and Mike's team chose to bring our onboarding specialists on-site anyway to match the pace of a busy property."

Cloud PMS vendors generally sell self-service onboarding as a feature, and for a lot of properties it genuinely works. But a 57-room resort coming off a 20-year-old system is close to the hardest version of this job: two decades of data, habits and workarounds, and a team that has never used anything else. Lennon's judgement, that paid on-site help was worth the extra cost, is a more honest data point for anyone in the same position than the standard implementation timeline.

What it means for operators

If you are looking at a similar move, budget for the onboarding rather than assuming the self-service path. The cost of a slow or messy cutover at a busy property is larger and less visible than the line item for on-site support.

The online check-in figure is also a fair benchmark to hold vendors to. Around 50% adoption at an independent resort is a real result, not a pilot number. If a vendor tells you their check-in flow will transform your arrivals, asking what percentage of guests actually use it at properties like yours is a reasonable next question.

Mews did not disclose contract terms or pricing, which is normal for this kind of announcement.