Many lodging businesses are at the stage today where they need a new infusion of technology. High on the list of technology requirements for guests are items like Wi-Fi Internet access and in-room entertainment systems. Hotel guests, when given a choice, will stay in hotels that provide such amenities as high speed Internet access along with a good variety of video and entertainment options. New technology can make the hotel more appealing to guests while increasing both profitability and efficiency for the owners.

High on the list of essential upgrades for the hotel IT staff involve two of the major components within the IT infrastructure, namely the phone system (PBX) and the Property Management System (PMS). These systems are going through a rapid modernization trend in the industry. Today, the PBX of choice for most hotels is one that utilizes IP (Internet protocol). While sales of traditional PBX phone systems (TDM) have been declining rapidly for several years now, sales of IP PBX systems have been growing sharply in the hospitality industry. Traditional Property Management Systems (PMS) are also undergoing change as more and more systems are moving away from traditional analog based systems to ones that utilize Internet Protocol for connectivity with other systems.

A modern hotel technology infrastructure will include a Property Management System (PMS) that is able to communicate with many Guest Service Systems (GSS) that include the PBX, Call Accounting, Energy Management, Video Services, and Point of Sale (PoS) systems to name a few. In order to tie these disparate systems together, a common “language” must be used and the leading product is Comtrol’s “Lodging Link” that utilizes Universal Hospitality Language Layer (UHLL). Hotel systems that support UHLL can seamlessly communicate with each other.

The trend in hotel phone systems is toward the IP PBX. This is a voice-over-IP system that uses IP phones in each guest room that plug into the hotel’s network infrastructure or may even be wireless (Wi-Fi). The pbxnsip Hospitality Edition has built in Voicemail for storing guest messages during their stay. With the ability to communicate with the hotel’s PMS (for example Executech) using UHLL, the pbxnsip Hospitality Edition phone system can support the following common PMS functions: