The Online check-in completed trigger fires when a guest finishes online check-in for a reservation. Use it to send the welcome message — door code, room number, parking details, anything the guest needs once they're officially checked in.
The trigger fires once per reservation, after the guest completes online check-in in your PMS. Two important details:
Arrival day only. The trigger only fires for reservations arriving today, and only within the daily texting window you set. A guest who completes online check-in two days early won't trigger the welcome message until their actual arrival day.
Window-aware. You set a daily texting window (e.g., 10:00 to 22:00). The trigger respects it:
If the guest has already completed check-in before the window opens → the message fires at the start of the window
If the guest completes check-in inside the window → the message goes out immediately
If the guest completes check-in after the window closes → the message is skipped for the day
The window can cross midnight (e.g., 22:00 to 03:00) to handle late-night arrivals.
Create a new workflow and choose Online check-in completed as the trigger
Set the texting window — the earliest and latest times of day this trigger should send. Example: 10:00 AM (earliest welcome) to 10:00 PM (latest acceptable send)
(Optional) Enable per-guest dedupe — see below
Add your actions (Send SMS, Send Email, Add Tag, etc.)
There's an optional toggle that prevents the trigger from firing more than once per guest per reservation. Turn it on when you want a strict "one welcome message per stay, ever" guarantee — for example, if the guest cancels and rebooks the same reservation, or if your PMS marks check-in as completed multiple times.
Leave it off if you want the trigger to fire on every fresh check-in event.
Good to know: To avoid duplicate sends, turn this on before today's send window opens (or after it closes). If you flip it on mid-window, guests who already received a message today could be messaged again.
Welcome message with door code. Send the guest their room number, door code ({{reservation.doorCode}}), and wifi info the moment they're checked in.
Quiet status update to your team. Add an internal Send SMS action that pings a manager when high-value guests have completed online check-in — pair with the Quiet automations option so the conversation doesn't bump into the inbox.
Welcome email with stay details. Send a longer welcome email with check-out details, breakfast hours, and a link to your concierge contact form.
Requires PMS connection. This trigger is PMS-gated — it won't appear in the trigger menu if your account isn't connected to a PMS (Mews today).
Online check-in must be enabled in your PMS. The trigger reads the check-in completed event from your PMS — if guests can't actually complete online check-in there, the trigger won't fire.
The trigger fires based on a single signal: did the guest complete online check-in in Mews? Three Mews-side check-in paths affect whether that signal ever gets set, and each one behaves a little differently:
Guest portal online check-in. The guest taps your magic check-in link or opens the Mews guest portal and completes check-in themselves. This sets the completion flag, and the trigger fires as documented above.
Front-desk manual check-in. Your team checks the guest in manually in Mews. This does not, on its own, set the online check-in completion flag — so the trigger doesn't fire. But if the guest already completed online check-in earlier, the manual check-in does not unset the completion flag — the trigger still considers them eligible and the welcome message goes out. If you want welcomes to go to manually-checked-in guests too, pair this trigger with the Reservation status change trigger as a fallback.
Mews automatic check-in. Mews has a per-bookable-service setting that automatically flips reservations to Checked-in at their arrival time without the guest or your team doing anything. If you want online check-in (or front-desk check-in) to be the intentional event that drives this trigger, turn Mews automatic check-in off on each bookable service. With it on, every reservation gets auto-checked-in at arrival time regardless of whether the guest completed online check-in, which makes the welcome trigger fire unpredictably or not at all depending on the order events happen.
To find the setting in Mews, see Set up and overview of bookable service settings and look for Enable automatic check-in in the bookable service options.
If you turn an Online check-in completed automation on while today's send window is already open, every guest arriving today who has already completed online check-in receives the message immediately. This is the same pattern as the per-guest dedupe gotcha above — to avoid sending unintended welcomes, activate the automation before the day's window opens (or after it closes), then let it run cleanly from the next day forward.
Pair with the Magic Check-in link. Send the magic check-in link earlier in the guest journey (e.g., the morning of arrival) so they have a one-tap way to complete online check-in. Then this trigger handles the welcome message once they do. See Mews Magic Links for details.
Always include a fallback for the guest's name. Hi {{guest.firstName|there}} reads better than a blank name. See Variables for the full fallback syntax.
Send Test before activating. The Send Test button on any action runs the message with sample data so you can confirm every variable renders correctly.
