Hotels are required to provide a phone in every room, but this essential and very costly piece of “decoration” is rarely used by guests at all, since most use their own phones to make calls. So month after month, hotels get a phone bill for every room, used or not. Why don’t hotels do the same thing as today’s consumers and ditch landlines?
Hotels must adhere to certain laws, such as Kari’s Law in the U.S. (codified at 47 U.S. Code § 623) and Telecom Decision CRTC 2007-44 in Canada. Kari’s Law was named after Kari Hunt, who was attacked and killed by her estranged husband in 2013 while in a motel room. During the attack, Kari’s 9-year old daughter unsuccessfully tried to call 911 four times, not knowing that the property required dialing “9” first to get an outside line. Today, this U.S. law requires multi-line systems, such as those used in hotels and office buildings, to call 911 directly without having to dial a prefix, provide notification to a front desk when a 911 call is made and offer location information to ensure guest/tenant safety. For hotels, this includes having a phone in each guest room.
With the budget challenges of 2020, what if there was a way to continue providing this critical service without paying the huge monthly phone bill? By moving this all to the cloud.
Check out Nomadix PBX. It provides clear and reliable communications and meets the safety requirements in the U.S. and Canada. In many cases, our service can save hotels money by making the switch (sometimes cutting costs up to half)!
You can also ditch the old-school phones. Through our partnership with Angie Hospitality, Angie can act as the in-room phone with voice-activated dialing. These digital assistants also fulfill guest requests and answer questions about the hotel and nearby attractions. Angie modernizes the guest experience by replacing old phones, alarm clocks and even bluetooth speakers, and integrates with existing hotel systems to control the thermostat, lights, TV and more. Operational optimization is just an added bonus!
Here’s what one of our customer has to say:
“We made the switch to Nomadix PBX for two reasons: to work with a reliable company where we never have to worry about the service and to save money each month to offset the impact of COVID-19 on operations,” said Patrick Fultz, owner at Sleep Woodstock in Vermont. “The great relationship we have with the Nomadix team might be the most important aspect. Especially with the 24/7 nature of travel and lodging, we know they are ready to assist if we ever need support.”
Being part of the industry for more than two decades, we understand the unique pain points. We doubled down on our R&D efforts this year to be able to offer the right-sized products at an affordable price for our customers and partners.
We also offer IP phones for the front desk and back office locations. Our service is compatible with most SIP/IP phones on the market, which is great if you already invested in those.
For more information, please reach out to our account reps to see how our services may help your hotel make some upgrades without breaking the bank.