Minor incident

Mews: Guest Messenger unavailable for some properties

Affected: Mews Guest Experience

Current status of Mews: Operational — live Mews status

Timeline

1. Oct 28, 2026, 09:13 UTC
   investigating
   Since 27 October at 15:34 CET, Guest Messenger in Mews Operations shows “Guest messaging is being set up” instead of the inbox for many properties that were already using it. Staff at affected properties can’t read or reply to guest messages, and guests don’t receive replies. Other parts of Mews Operations aren’t affected. We’re investigating the cause and will post an update within 30 minutes.
2. Oct 28, 2026, 09:26 UTC
   investigating
   Since 27 October, 15:34 CET, Guest Messenger shows “Guest messaging is being set up” instead of the inbox for some properties, and guests aren’t getting replies. We found the cause and are rolling out a fix. You don’t need to do anything.
3. Oct 28, 2026, 09:28 UTC
   identified
   The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented.
4. Oct 28, 2026, 09:53 UTC
   identified
   The Mews team identified the issue and is working on a resolution. Further updates will follow as we make progress.
5. Oct 28, 2026, 10:19 UTC
   monitoring
   Guest Messenger is working normally for all properties.
6. Oct 28, 2026, 10:25 UTC
   resolved
   The issue is now fully resolved. Mews is now operating as expected.
7. Nov 5, 2026, 11:40 UTC
   postmortem
   ## Problem From 14:33 UTC on 27 October until 10:26 UTC on 28 October, guest messaging was unavailable for some properties. Guest Messenger showed "Guest messaging is being set up" instead of the inbox, and messages from Expedia guests were not delivered. Every Expedia message from that period was delivered afterwards, delayed by up to 19 hours. No messages were lost. ## Action We identified the cause on the morning of 28 October. We updated the two affected services with a valid credential and restarted them, which restored guest messaging by 10:26 UTC. We then updated every other service that uses the same credential, and confirmed all delayed Expedia messages were delivered. ## Causes We were rotating credentials for our feature flag service, as remediation for an internal security incident contained to those credentials. Many of our services use them to load their feature configuration. The old credentials stayed valid for six days so every service had time to switch. Two services that guest messaging depends on had not switched when the old credentials expired on 27 October. When they next restarted, they could not load their configuration and fell back to default settings, which turn guest messaging off. Our monitoring raised an alert soon after the problem started, but it did not reach an on-call engineer, so we only learned of the problem from customer reports the next morning. ## Solutions * We are introducing one standard, scripted process for replacing credentials and certificates, including a complete list of the services that use each one, advance notice to their owners, and a restart step. * We are moving shared credentials to a single managed location, so a replacement reaches every service at once. * We are standardising access to where credentials are stored, so engineers can find and update every copy quickly. * We are making sure availability alerts for guest messaging page an on-call engineer. * We are changing Guest Messenger to show an error, rather than "being set up", when it cannot load its configuration, so problems are visible straight away.

Updates as published by Mews (original).