Best hotel phone systems to choose

Based on our in-depth research, the best hotel phone system provider for small businesses is bOnline. It offers a feature-filled, small business-centric service that includes an in-depth reporting dashboard and a preset call flows editor – all at a reasonable price compared to other top providers.

But, the important question is, regardless of bOnline’s title as our best hotel phone system provider, is it the right choice for your business? It isn’t the only contender in the ring – RingCentral and Mitel also offer fantastic hotel phone system solutions.

Setting up a hotel phone system costs time and money, and the service you’ve paid for not fitting the needs of your business is the last thing you want – especially after the huge difficulties the hospitality sector has faced during the pandemic.

If you want to carry out further research, read on for our review of the best hotel phone system providers. We’ll also explain the benefits of using a hotel phone system for your business, and offer some top tips for choosing the right hotel phone system to suit your needs.

The top hotel phone system providers: an overview

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Provider bOnline	Provider Mitel	Provider GoTo	Provider LilyComms	Provider RingCentral	Provider 4Com
Best for Small, boutique hotels wanting affordable phone systems	Best for Small businesses looking to scale	Best for Features to help maximise efficiency and productivity	Best for 24/7 customer support and dedicated onboarding	Best for Unified communications across your staff	Best for Hotel staff who are always on the go
Pricing from £6 per month	Pricing from £13.59 per month	Pricing from £10.00 per month	Pricing from Bespoke quotes only	Pricing from £7.99 per month	Pricing from Bespoke quotes only

Compare hotel phone system costs for your business needs Compare Costs

According to our research, the top UK hotel phone system providers are:

1. bOnline
2. Mitel
3. GoTo
4. LilyComms
5. RingCentral
6. 4Com

Whether you’re searching for the best support, pricing, scalability, or more, we’ve profiled each of these best hotel phone providers for small UK businesses to help you find the ideal match for your priorities – highlighting the features, prices, and pros and cons of each. Below is a general overview of each provider:

The best hotel phone systems: a deep dive

bOnline has received countless telecoms business awards in recent years. It champions itself as the UK’s number one small business VoIP provider – and offers a full comms package, which includes broadband, a website and a VoIP telephone system. This VoIP software provider has already helped support over 50,000 small UK businesses and is the perfect provider for boutique hotels that want an affordable VoIP system.

Features

bOnline offers 50+ features – including unlimited calling, a reporting dashboard, a digital phone line, and a mobile app. You’ll also be able to try out the service free for 30 days. The reporting dashboard is a unique bOnline feature that some providers don’t offer, or offer only on a premium plan (which isn’t cost effective for small businesses). It uses infographics and processes real-time data, so you can interpret insights and make business decisions based on call volumes and durations. This is great for predicting how busy certain times of the day will be at your hotel, so you can plan rota’s and make sure you’ve got enough staff working during peak hours.

You can also preset call flows, a function offered only by bOnline. This allows you to customise call flows to your business, directing customers through the appropriate contact channels. This feature is especially handy if you don’t have an existing PBX system, auto-attendant, or receptionist. It’s also perfect for directing guests to the appropriate team, for example, your hotel’s leisure centre, spa, or room service.

You can set up the bOnline VoIP hosted system in just two minutes, with no engineers, installations, or IT buffs required (a piece of cake compared to 4com and Lily, both of which have lengthy onboarding processes that can take weeks).

Verdict

For us, bOnline wins the title of best hotel phone system provider for small businesses because it is built specifically for smaller operations. In the larger picture of telecoms companies, bOnline doesn’t have the operational capacity and technical ability of 8×8 or RingCentral. But we write reviews for startups and small business owners – and bOnline is the best product for our readers.

Features

Mitel provides sophisticated phone systems and specialist packages tailored to different industries, including the hospitality sector. The MiCloud Connect, Mitel’s VoIP package, gives businesses the option to create their own phone system package with a number of integrations, including Outlook and G Suite. The Premier and Elite packages come with useful features like voicemail transcription, on-demand call recording, and archiving. All helpful tools for hotel receptions to utilise.

Verdict

The Mitel 400 Hospitality Package comes with an array of features specifically designed with customer service in mind. It’s the ideal professional solution for communication and administrations in hotels offering guest management services. Even better, its versatility makes it the perfect phone system for hotels that are looking to scale – it provides a solution that can cater for small businesses with as few as four rooms, to those offering a high level of comfort with up to nearly 300 rooms.

Features

GoToConnect by GoTo is a feature-filled hotel phone system, great for small hotels requiring round-the-clock, 24/7 support. It boasts an abundance of useful features for your hotel to utilise, including HD video conferencing included as standard with every plan. The GoToConnect app allows you to seamlessly switch between your desk phone, mobile, and desktop app to take calls. Whilst the nifty dial plan visual editor is great for quickly and easily, configuring call routing. This is ideal for setting up particular call flows and directing hotel guests and customers to the appropriate team.

Verdict

GoToConnect is a great phone system for hotels that may need to regularly change preset call flows. The HD video conferencing function is great if you’re always on the go and need to catch up remotely with your hotel staff. However, GoToConnect hasn’t been developed specifically with hotels in mind, and so the fact it comes with lots of nifty features that are only available on the standard or premium plan results in it becoming quite an expensive provider, especially for smaller, boutique hotels.

Lily supplies over 2,500 businesses across the UK with its award-winning VoIP communications system. Its on-premise VoIP solution enables businesses to adopt a hybrid phone system, meaning they can use their analogue system alongside an internet-based cloud phone system – giving them the best of both worlds.

Features

Lily offers a brilliant hosted VoIP system for hotels, with monthly savings of 30-60% if you’re switching from older ISDN or analogue lines. Its VoIP offering comes with a range of features, including call recording, auto-attendant, personalised messages, and the Collaborate platform. Collaborate is an all-in-one unified communications app included free with your VoIP service, and is ideal for teams needing to collaborate frequently – it offers voice calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing and more, all in one place.

Verdict

With a solid five star Trustpilot rating, Lily Communications is a reliable provider that puts a focus on its relationships with its customers. It’s up there as the best provider for customer support, promising a maximum four hour response time for any major fault, and providing a dedicated account manager to support you through, from the setup process to any issues/queries further down the line. It’s ideal for hotel businesses just starting out, who need dedicated support to get their phone system up and running smoothly.

Features

RingCentral’s essential plan comes with 100 inclusive outbound minutes per user/per month as standard which is great for communicating with future hotel guests, and at only £7.99 per month, it’s a fairly competitive price for what you get. The service can be integrated with hundreds of apps, including Microsoft 365, Salesforce and Google. Keep in mind that integration with Salesforce and Zendesk is only available with the premium plan.

Features on the standard and premium plans include call management (auto-attendant), high-definition voice, and quality of service reports that are great for measuring employee performance. 24/7 customer support is included with all four plans, and the premium plan even comes with a dedicated account manager.

Verdict

Despite RingCentral boasting 24/7 support on all of its plans, customer satisfaction levels are relatively low on review sites like Trustpilot, as technical support isn’t the best and resolution times are often slow. But this is largely due to RingCentral’s popularity, and if you can grasp the app, with its easy-to-use interface and simple functionality, you won’t need much support anyway.

4Com offers its own VoIP system through its HiHi series of phones. The HiHi is a tablet phone that slots into a docking station. It offers businesses flexibility by giving employees the option to take their HiHi phone wherever they move to around the hotel, simply by taking the tablet out of its docking station.

Features

Hotels can use the HiHi VoIP phone for calling, video calling, instant messaging, call recording, and reporting. You can also upload social media and customer relationship management (CRM) apps onto the HiHi device – although it’s worth bearing in mind that the device doesn’t have the same level of processing power as popular devices like Samsung or Apple tablets. The HiHi phones also come with ‘HiHi Connect’ and ‘HiHi There’ apps for unified communication across your business (instant messaging).

Verdict

4Com tailors its VoIP package to the unique needs of your business, which is why it doesn’t have any prices advertised. There are no fixed costs or set prices, making it ideal for hotels that may experience fluctuating or lower guest volumes. In other words, you won’t have to pay for something you don’t need. 24-hour fault reporting is included, but 24-hour support is an extra cost.

Top tips for choosing the best hotel telephone system for you

Overseeing the comings and goings in a busy hotel can be quite a task, with both guests and staff needing some form of management at all times. Basic hotel IP phone systems can do just that, providing up-to-date guest information, LCD screens, and voicemail.

Some questions to consider to help you choose a hotel phone system include:

• How many calls does your hotel make and receive each day?
• Do your guests/staff mainly require national or international calls?
• Which other systems, if any, might your phone system need to be integrated with? E.g. a booking system or restaurant management software
• How many lines does your hotel need?
• Where do you intend to use the phone systems?

Consider the type of hotel phone you might need

From full-featured reception consoles to more basic phones for guests’ rooms, there are a variety of hotel phones available, providing varying levels of functionality.

Hotel guest room phones

A guest room phone will usually be durable and easy to use, as well as wall mountable. Typically, it has limited functionality, with features including caller ID, a wake-up call function, and voicemail.

Hotel reception phones

A hotel reception phone is an essential tool for communicating vital information around the hotel.

Therefore, a decent hotel reception phone will usually have HD audio (to ensure there’s no miscommunication), a large touchscreen display for viewing guest information, and mobile integration, alongside all the features you’d expect from a standard internet protocol (IP) phone.

Other hotel phones

When deciding on a phone for the other rooms in your hotel, such as the gym, kitchen, or laundry room, think about what would be suitable for that environment and what kind of functionality you’ll need.

For example, a phone in a busy, noisy, greasy kitchen should be hard-wearing and easy to use, while your laundry room phone should be connected to a system that makes it reachable by all your guests.

What will guests expect?

While guests’ needs are likely to vary, there are some key features that many will expect from telephones for hotels. These include:

• Wake-up calls
• Room-to-room calls
• Front desk connection
• National/international dialling

How much will hotel phone handsets cost?

Although prices can vary depending on the size and capability of the phone system you require for your small hotel, below we’ve provided a guide as to what you might expect to pay.

How we test business telephone (VoIP) systems

We tested eight VoIP systems to evaluate them in terms of functionality, usability, security options, cost, and more so we can make the most useful recommendations to small UK-based businesses.

Our rigorous testing process means these products have been scored and rated in seven main categories of investigation and 16 subcategories – in fact, we covered 78 areas of investigation in total. We then gave each category score a ‘relevance weighting' to ensure the product's final score perfectly reflects the needs of our Startups.co.uk readers.

Our main testing categories for VoIP systems are:

Customer Score: external customer opinion as to their satisfaction; the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular VoIP product. Also, the market position and reputation a VoIP software holds.

Cost: the pricing structure associated with the VoIP service, such as monthly subscription fees, call rates, and setup fees.

Features: the functionalities and capabilities offered by the VoIP service, e.g. call forwarding, voicemail, call waiting, and caller ID.

External Connections: the VoIP service's ability to connect and integrate with external systems or devices, including compatibility with existing phone systems and integration with mobile devices.

Customer Support: the assistance and resources provided by the VoIP service provider to customers, such as technical support, documentation, and online resources.

Security Options: the measures and features implemented by the VoIP service to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and protection of voice communications and data.

Scalability: the ability of the VoIP service to accommodate the growth and changing needs of an organization, such as the capacity to handle a growing number of users or support multiple locations.

The Startups product testing process

Next steps: roundup and comparing the best hotel phone systems

As mentioned earlier, the best hotel phone system provider for small businesses is without a doubt bOnline. Although an underdog in the telecoms industry, this company brushes aside its competition with ease, beating industry veteran Mitel to the top spot.

bOnline is the best provider because it offers the whole package, specifically tailored to small businesses. For starters, you get 50+ features provided as standard, including unlimited calling and an incredibly user-friendly mobile app. The reporting dashboard is an excellent, customisable feature that produces real-time data so you can monitor staff resource, and you don’t have to be signed up to the premium package to access it.

The hotel phone system offered by Lily Comms comes with excellent service, but the reason it doesn’t make the cut as the best overall provider is that it falls short of the technical capacity necessary to offer the software-savvy features specifically helpful to hotel businesses. 4com and GoTo successfully balance the offering of customer support and technical savviness, but don’t offer enough features to compete with bOnline for the best provider title.

Regardless of our opinion, you should always compare hotel phone system providers before signing on the dotted line. The last thing you want is to be stuck in a contract with a service that doesn’t fulfil the needs of your business, even if it is, generally speaking, a great product.

This is where our custom-built comparison tool comes in. We’ve partnered with some of the best hotel phone system suppliers to help you get the best service for your business. Simply fill in a few basic details, and providers will be in touch with bespoke personalised quotes for you to compare, along with further details about why the service they offer would best suit the needs of your business.