Hotel benefits from enormous potential of VoIP

One of Scotland's leading hotels has substantially upgraded its business appeal by installing a new VoIP telecommunications network.

The five-star Mar Hall Hotel has selected the NEC Philips 2000 IPS solution to overcome its particular problems in meeting the demands of its business clientele.

Built in 1892, Mar Hall Hotel is a grade-A listed building, which has hampered its efforts to upgrade its telecommunications infrastructure by restricting the owners' ability to make modifications, such as adding extra telephone points.

At the same time, the hotel is a major centre for business meetings and conferences and its clients frequently need personalised telecoms solutions in their rooms.

The hotel's IT manager Steve Messenger explained: "Our clients' needs and requirements were the main drivers for a new telephony system. The existing system was outdated and ageing and we began to understand the enormous potential that VoIP could offer.

"Due to the historic nature of the building we were unable to install additional plugs and sockets so with the help of Premier Telecommunications we utilised existing category five cabling backed by an IP voice server," he said, speaking to Telephonyworld.com.

This allows the hotel to scale up individual rooms' capacities from just one or two phones to a full multi-connection office.

Mr Messenger added: "Moving forward, we are also looking to implement IP DECT technology as this would be an ideal answer to the cabling hurdles.

"Staff such as the maintenance teams, night porters, catering staff working throughout the hotel need to be able to pick up incoming calls and in a hotel environment wireless technology would be invaluable."