In recent years, though logging onto the Internet from any hotel room, or picking up WiFi from any lobby has become commonplace, voice communication technologies in many hotels are surprisingly lagging.

 

At a time when guests often refuse to consider a stay anywhere without WiFi Internet access and in-room entertainment systems, very few are clamoring for PBX (News - Alert) upgrades.

 

Those amenities may not be high on many hotel IT executives’ wish lists, especially when it comes to upgrading major components within the IT infrastructure – most notably phone and property management system.

 

“It’s a very complicated process,” said John Clark, IT manager for the Newport Hotel Group. The company operates seven hotels throughout New England. “It’s obviously not something your guests are even going to be thinking about but when it comes to the different types of functionality required from a room phone, you better have a good system in place.”

 

The Newport Hotel Group recently set out to revamp the phone system in its flagship resort, the 68-room waterfront Newport Beach Hotel & Suites in Rhode Island.

 

Because trends in hotel phone systems has shifted in recent years toward the flexible IP-PBX, according to Clark, the voice-over-IP system uses IP phones in each guest room has been designed specifically to plug into the hotel’s network infrastructure.

 

The hotel group, on a recommendation from another firm, sought out Massachusetts-based pbxnsip Inc., to lead the overhaul of the system, which included using the latest snom IP phones in each room.

 

Andover, Mass-based pbxnsip is a provider of SIP-based Private Branch Exchange software communication systems. Its Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) or "SIP" method is used to talk to attached devices like telephones, PSTN gateways or SIP service providers.

 

The pbxnsip IP PBX phone system is approved as a certified application fully compatible with a universal Hotel reservations and billing application called Universal Hospitality Language Layer, also known as UHLL. The idea behind the platform is to provide the industry a standard messaging language that enables communication between UHLL-compliant Property Management Systems (PMS) and Guest Service System (GSS) devices, such as a UHLL compliant PBX.

“They were willing to work with us from a whole experience,” said Clark, noting that building out a complete system tailored to the hotel’s specific needs was  a daunting task when the company first decided to move forward with the overhaul.

For example, said Clark, guests don’t care if voicemails are left in the system after they check out, but from the hospitality standpoint, having a function that automatically wipes that slate clean is incredibly important for the overall performance of the hotel.

 

In fact, the pbxnsip (News - Alert) Hospitality Edition is designed to handle a myriad of tasks with a built in voicemail for storing guest messages during their stay and the ability to communicate with the hotel’s PMS using UHLL.

 
According to pbxnsip COO Kevin Moroz (News - Alert), the pbxnsip Hospitality Edition phone system can also support the following common PMS functions:

Of course, there is some middleware involved that makes the installation of the system tricky. Moroz said the interface with property management is controlled through middleware from Comtrol.

 

Last year, pbxnsip teamed with Comptrol to integrate its IP PBX software with Comtrol's Lodging Link product. Lodging Link is a universal interface engine that enables seamless integration between a hotel's Property Management System and any Guest Service System device such as the PBX, Call Accounting and Point of Sale.

 

Of course, any systems is only as good as the phone deployed. And pbxnsip, in conjunction with the hotel, chose to go with snom’s 320 line of IP phones.  The SIP based phone is designed Ideal with a built-in, full-duplex speakerphone and three-party conference bridging and has a 2 x 24 semi-graphic LCD display and menu-driven user interface support an uncomplicated feature management.