How VoIP Has Influenced the Hotel Industry: Part 1

Throughout the last few months, we've discussed quite a bit about convergence, VoIP, IP-PBXes, and the like. What's been increasingly interesting, however, is to chart the "spread" of convergence technologies from industry to industry.

Today, let's focus on the hotel/hospitality market, and their shift away from traditional telephony. As with any new technology, some examples in the "market" are quicker to adopt new technology earlier than others. What drives this interest and migration to new technology? It's usually competition.

Las Vegas has an incredibly fast-growing hospitality market. Hotels and resorts are always under construction or constant remodel. In the early 2000s, hotels began to take interest in IP telephony, and began to revamp their entire voice communications infrastructure to provide new features to guests and employees alike.

In Vegas, having an IP telephone in a standard guest room is becoming the norm, rather than the exception. With color screens, multi-line functionality, and the ability to introduce marketing opportunities into the hotel room, the IP telephone has literally replaced its analog counterpart.

Of course, these advancements in technology haven't made it to every hospitality demographic yet, but there's a notable change thats sweeping through the market. What's holding back hotels in less competitive markets? Cost.

As these devices become cheaper, it's only practical for the hospitality industry to move away from traditional telephony. Analog telephony is becoming a liability. Maintaining thousands of feet of cable, supporting two cable plants (voice and data), is becoming a thing of the past.

To close, imagine this scenario. Can you imagine the needless manpower of changing paper labels in analog telephones for a 2000-room property, because a new restaurant is added? Not when it can be done in 20 seconds from any computer connected to the hotel's voice network!