VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems have been around for a couple of decades now, offering better call quality, more scalability, and a lower monthly bill, among other benefits. But it’s not just the calling itself that a VoIP phone system will help you with — it’s virtually every aspect of your operations.
Hotels thrive on human contact — a friendly face at the front desk, the bar, the restaurant, or roaming around the building can make a huge difference in how much a guest enjoys their stay. But your employees’ time is valuable, and it’s often taken up with menial tasks like scheduling wake-up calls, bookings, and answering basic phone questions. With VoIP, you can free up a lot of their time for more productive, valuable work. Here’s how.
Remote Check-In and Check-Out
No one likes checking into a hotel, especially if that means waiting in line on a Friday evening while an overwhelmed member of the front desk staff hands out plastic key cards. And when your trip is over and you’re in a hurry to make a flight home, you don’t want to wait in line for that, either.
A digital telephony system will allow your guests to bypass all of that hassle and enable remote check-in and check-out, either via a phone tree, a website, or even an app. Your guests can call from the car on the way to the hotel to let you know they’re arriving, drop off their bags in the room, and head out to see the sights without slowing down. And when they leave, they can simply walk out the door and let you know remotely that the room is ready to be turned around.
Saving Time on Housekeeping
The old way of running a housekeeping service hasn’t changed in nearly a century: your housekeeping staff roll their carts up and down hallways, knocking on doors and replacing towels and toiletries. With a digitized system, that can all change.
By integrating your hotel’s phone system with housekeeping’s room tracking software, you can enable your guests to call a number, press a few buttons, and set their room to “do not disturb” or ask that it be cleaned. They can even ask that housekeeping stay out of the room until 10 a.m. if they want to sleep in or request extra supplies that they may have forgotten.
At your staff’s end, they won’t have to spend any time knocking on doors or looking for hanging tags on doorknobs. They’ll be able to tell exactly which rooms on what floors are ready to be cleaned and which ones to ignore, saving them time and enabling you to turn rooms around faster.
More Flexible Staff
The main priority of your on-site staff should be the comfort and delight of your guests. If a guest wants help finding the gym, advice about local restaurants, assistance with their room, or any other form of personal service, your staff should be ready to drop everything and provide it for them.
That means that they won’t be able to answer phones or maybe even stand at the desk while they’re helping, but that’s ok! With a VoIP system, your staff and managers can answer calls from anywhere on the property, or even at home. You can even outsource your information and booking lines to someone off-site entirely, freeing up your on-site staff for more important guest services.
Better Operations With Better Technology
You didn’t hire your hotel staff because they can type booking information into a computer, you hired them for their amiability and people skills — but those skills are wasted a lot of the time of your staff is stuck behind a desk, doing menial tasks that a computer can do just as well.
With a VoIP system from Phonesuite, you can completely transform the way your hotel does business, creating a more efficient, friendly, and guest-friendly experience. Curious about the cost? Get in touch with Phonesuite today.
