SIP Trunking for Hotels: Top 10 Business-Enhancing Benefits

Communication is critical to the hospitality industry, from coordinating with guests from around the world to receiving internal calls for room service and wake-up calls. Modern consumers demand fast responses from the hotels they stay with and prefer various communication options, including voice, messaging, and live chat.

Over half of consumers will work with the first business that responds to their inquiries. A reliable SIP trunking solution from a cloud-based provider will ensure your hotel, lodge, or resort can call and message international travelers and take internal calls from rooms.

When you select a reputable communications partner, you’ll have a reliable and scalable communication network that allows your hotel staff to make long-distance and international calls at an affordable price. Explore why hotels and resorts choose SIP trunking services from modern Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers to optimize the benefits of this powerful communication solution.

SIP Trunking: What Is It and Why Are Hotels Adopting It?

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking provides VoIP calling, messaging, live chat, video conferencing, and data sharing over a virtual network connection. The SIP trunk offers nearly unlimited channels to carry simultaneous communication sessions. It offers greater scalability than traditional primary rate interface (PRI) lines from public switched telephone network (PSTN) carriers, which are limited to 23 simultaneous connections per line. 

SIP’s inherent scalability factors into cost-effectiveness, eliminating the need for multiple PRI lines to scale your hotel or resort’s communication capabilities. Hotels and resorts are adopting SIP trunking to replace or enhance traditional private branch exchange (PBX) systems and PSTN carriers. 

PBX systems enable hotels’ internal and external communications. They allow hotels to make VoIP calls and share various forms of data, including video. Calls can be received internally or by VoIP and PSTN phone systems outside the hotel. SIP provides scalability and reliability at a lower cost than traditional PSTN carriers. It allows for long-distance and international calling at lower costs, making it ideal for hotels welcoming guests from abroad.

The 10 Benefits of Implementing SIP Trunking Into Your Hotels

What can SIP trunking do for your hotel or resort? SIP trunking from a reputable communications partner can provide the following benefits:

Benefit 1. Reduced Communication Costs

SIP trunking offers cost-effective calling and scalability with fewer infrastructure and equipment costs. Your hotel won’t need to pay for more PRI lines to scale up and can make long-distance and international calls at an affordable rate. SIP can save up to 50% on calling compared to traditional PSTN options.

When you select a cloud-based communications provider as your SIP trunking partner, you can pay a flat rate for your monthly calling, allowing your hotel to have a predictable monthly budget.

Benefit 2. No Long-Term Contracts

When you partner with a reputable communications partner, you don’t need to commit to a costly long-term contract. Top-tier providers offer 60 minutes of free SIP calling to test the service. If satisfied, you pay a flat month-to-month fee for SIP services. You’ll only pay for the SIP channels you need, and if you want to scale up or down, you can modify the number of SIP trunks from a simple administrative portal.

Benefit 3. Business-Enhancing Features

With a SIP trunking solution from a reputable communications partner, you can benefit from business-enhancing features. Access call detail records (CDRs) to analyze data like answer rates and responses. You’ll have direct inward dialing (DID) phone numbers to make internal and external calls in the U.S. and internationally. You’ll also get features like e911 and CNAM (caller ID names).

Benefit 4. High-Quality Calling

Making calls over a high-quality SIP trunking platform delivers crystal clear voice service without jitter or lag. Your hotel can take advantage of high-quality voice service with G.711 codecs over a Tier-1 network for seamless and consistent calls. The ideal cloud-based communications partner provides redundant voice networks to guarantee the delivery of your inbound and outbound calls.

Benefit 5. Near Limitless Scalability

SIP trunking allows you to scale your call capacity with virtual channels added through a simple administrative portal. If your hotel operates on a seasonal basis, you can scale up and return to normal call capacities with the cloud’s elasticity. You won’t need to risk investing in another PRI line or hardware that your hotel might only use for the busy season.

Benefit 6. Unified Communications

SIP trunking provides a pathway to creating a single communications system that combines voice, data, messaging, video, and fax. You can unify your communication channels in a single SIP trunk for simple management over a reliable network.

With more personalized communication options, such as messaging and live chat, guests can communicate with hotel staff before, during, and after their stay. According to Boston University, guests expect hotels to offer integrated messaging in their mobile apps and prefer to message the hotel before they arrive. They also prefer messaging for less urgent issues during their stay, such as requesting amenities. Guests are happy to message a hotel after their stay, providing valuable feedback for the business.

Benefit 7. Compatibility With Existing Equipment

Cloud-based SIP trunking services are compatible with existing IP-PBX, IP phones, and smartphones. You can also replace your PBX with SIP trunking or use a virtual PBX with popular options, such as FreePBX®, Asterisk, or FreeSwitch, and systems from brands like Cisco, Avaya, and 3CX. 

In most cases, all you need is a reliable internet connection and telephony devices to get started with SIP. You can even bring your own bandwidth without using the SIP trunking provider as your ISP.

Benefit 8. Flexible Remote Working Features

In the modern world, employees and businesses alike prefer flexible working environments. Cloud-based SIP trunking allows authorized users to make and receive calls using the SIP trunk. If you have staff working remotely and in the office, SIP trunking will enable users to use voice services with consistent call quality.

Benefit 9. Reliability and Business Continuity

When a weather emergency or other issue prevents your team from getting to your hotel, SIP calls can easily be rerouted to different locations, mobile devices, or home phones using remote call forwarding. A reliable SIP partner can ensure calls are received with dynamic physical failover solutions to switch to a new physical network when there is an outage or interruption.

Benefit 10. Security and Protection

Reputable SIP trunk providers offer features to protect your communications from fraud and malicious actors. Cloud-based communications partners can provide real-time network monitoring and toll fraud prevention to keep your communications secure. 

While hosting your SIP trunking solution in the cloud can be a security challenge, partnering with a secure SIP trunking partner can be a game-changer as you gain experts to maintain secure communications affordably.

What to Look for When Selecting a SIP Trunking Partner

While SIP trunking can deliver benefits to your hotel or resort, finding a partner that meets your unique needs is critical. Selecting a SIP trunking provider hosting your communications on a Tier-1 network will ensure scalable, reliable, and high-quality calling. Consider the compatibility of the SIP trunking service with your current or future PBX integrations. A reputable partner will offer compatibility with the leading hardware and virtual PBX brands.

A cloud-based SIP trunking solution can deliver business-enhancing features, such as DID. Consider business-continuity features, such as dynamic physical failover and remote call forwarding, to ensure inbound calls reach their intended recipient. Top providers offer security features like toll fraud prevention. Cost is also a primary consideration, so find a partner that offers a free trial of the SIP trunking service and a flexible month-to-month payment option with no long-term obligations.

Boost Your Hotels Communications With SIP Trunking From a Modern Cloud-Based Partner

SIP trunking delivers affordable, reliable, and scalable communications to your hotel. When you partner with SIP.US, your communications are hosted on a Tier-1 network with redundancy to ensure you have the capacity and resilience you need. 

SIP.US offers business-enhancing features like toll-fraud protection, DID, and CNAM to help your hotel stand out and deliver consistent internal and external communications. You can bring your own bandwidth using your preferred ISP, and our SIP trunking services are compatible with a range of IP-PBX and virtual PBX systems. Get started enhancing your hotel communications today with SIP.US.