Upgrading A PBX Phone System In Hotels: Florida Experts Share The Cost Benefits

It's ironic that within 5 minutes of checking in, most hotel guests will sit down and add the WiFi password into their cell phone. All just feet from a house phone they'll never touch.

Yet hotels are legally required to make sure their guests can access emergency services. Which means having a phone in every room. And with that phone comes support and infrastructure. Which ends up creating a pretty big bill for a service that's virtually unused.

But it doesn't have to. Voistay communications experts explain how.

Hold The Phone

Aging phone systems may be costing many hotels $100,000 or more each year, according to a recent report from Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals, an international nonprofit association. Annual maintenance and line fees for an analog or legacy PBX systems cost between $6,000 and $16,000 for an average 200-room hotel.

Say guests actually do pick up the phone - to request towels or another service that doesn't generate revenue. Answering these calls takes employees away from valuable tasks. These labor costs can rack up $40,000 to $80,000 annually, according to HFTP.

Updates & Upgrades

But your hotel doesn't have to stay in the cycle of unpredictable costs and aging equipment repairs. Switching over to a voice-over-IP system can save hotels both infrastructure and labor costs. To switch while avoiding minimal disruption during the upcoming holiday busy season, specialists recommend:

1. Choose the right VoIP hardware that is going to meet the needs of your hotel while being user friendly for staff and guests
2. Ensure the system is room-specific, to ensure compliance with E911, Kari's Law, and Ray Baum's Act
3. Battery backup is necessary to maintain functionality during power outage
4. Integrated AI functions can solve simple requests and reserve human help for more complicated issues

Never Miss A Call

Legacy system expenses can mount quietly during busy seasons. Then, the high volume often strains underused systems or leads to unexpected equipment failures. Additionally, the higher volume of front desk calls creates a hidden increase in labor costs.

Stop throwing good money after bad. Replace obsolete analog and PBX systems with a cost-effective, streamlined VoIP system before the holiday rush.