
allTower, Inc., the leading provider of Always-On, hosted communications and collaboration solutions for businesses, today introduced the new CallTower Hospitality Suite, the hotel industry's first and only complete, hosted suite of voice and data services and applications that is exclusively designed for, and delivered to, hotels and hospitality organizations.
The new CallTower Hospitality Suite allows hoteliers to create a differentiated experience that delivers advanced business communications to travelers -- with minimal investment -- resulting in increased revenue and occupancy.
As part of today's Hospitality Suite announcement, CallTower also announced a partnership with Percipia, Inc. to provide hotels and hospitality organizations with a comprehensive suite of applications for Cisco's color touch screen-based IP phones.
The new CallTower Hospitality Suite provides hoteliers an advanced set of hosted voice, data and application capabilities that eliminates the maintenance costs of managing on-premise telephony, internet service, and guest services systems. Hotel and hospitality groups can now seamlessly add hosted, in-room voice, data and Internet services and marketing offers, without having to purchase and manage an on-premise PBX.
Hospitality Market Seeks Differentiator
Today, hotel systems and their related devices are typically disjointed islands, each requiring different interfaces and cabling. Most hotels are experiencing challenges in how they efficiently manage the growing IT infrastructure demands of email, voicemail, fax and other customer support services, as well as the capital expense to deliver these new technology solutions.
Historically, phone systems were a reliable revenue generator for hotels. With the advent of cell phones and handheld wireless devices, hotel PBX systems became merely a necessary expense. Now, however, a hotel's phone system can be a powerful differentiator, can attract clients and produce revenue in ways that traditional phone systems simply cannot do.
The CallTower Hospitality Suite is vital to the hospitality industry because it can lower costs, provide superior guest services, and as a result, transform the hotel telephony back into a revenue-generator.
Guest Service Improvement and Revenue Opportunities
Guests will find the CallTower-enabled hotel and its services easier and more convenient to use. From their room phone, they can set or change wake-up calls or do-not-disturb notices. They can view dining options or local attractions, and then dial them with one touch. Using the simple Cisco color phone interface, guests can schedule hotel services, such as a tee time or a spa appointment, with no waiting and at any hour. CallTower includes capabilities that can genuinely improve the guest experience, encourage returnees, and drive hotel revenue.
Also, the innovative telephone color touch display gives hotels an opportunity to market highly visible advertising space and messages for hotel services and/or local and national advertisers. When a hotel has a cancellation at the spa or the golf course, the owner/manager can quickly and easily promote the open time slot to targeted guests.
One-Wire Ease and Flexibility for Commercial Property Owners/Managers
The CallTower Hospitality Suite of voice/data services is built into a hotel's infrastructure, and provides one-wire, fixed-price delivery of all voice/data applications and services to travelers. The services are delivered via a single coax wire to each room, so hotels do not have to have multiple cables or service providers laying cable in their buildings for separate telephone and data services.
CallTower's Hospitality Suite is built on Cisco's ® CallManager technology, and allows hotel owners/managers to connect, with one common infrastructure, phones, high speed Internet, energy management, the room mini-bar, operations, reservations, marketing and services. Guest room phones can display local and home weather, stock quotes, local dining options, a local directory, currency rates, airport schedules, daily room service menus, and the ability to view the list of members of a group at the hotel, then directly dial them, all at the touch of the guest's fingertips.
The new CallTower Hospitality Suite includes: Internet, telephony, voice, email and fax messaging, calling plans, network administration, single-wire connectivity, call center functions, Microsoft Exchange integration, presence management, disaster-proof access to all data and voicemail, and 24/7 customer support. These new CallTower services allow hotels to realize:
-- Conversion of the telephone from a cost center to a profit center
-- Improved customer satisfaction and guest services
-- No maintenance
-- Reduced capital expense -- fixed monthly fee
-- Lower number of vendors, accounting time and effort
-- Increased occupancy
-- Disaster Recovery in Voice & Data
-- Completely converged network infrastructure which can actually save
money
-- Single cable plant
-- Obsolescence-proof hardware and services
-- New services for guests and the staff's ability to recognize guests
-- A strategic competitive advantage for the hotel
"CallTower's Hospitality Suite allows hotel owners to provide the telephony, broadband, Internet, and hotel applications and services that travelers want. CallTower's Cisco® color touch screen phone-based applications seamlessly deliver the marketing offers and features their guests use day-in and day-out. CallTower gives hotels the opportunity to be more competitive and to provide travelers with a better experience, and as a result, increase revenue and occupancy rates," said Mark Harris, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for CallTower. "With CallTower, hotels can also work with local and national advertisers to provide outside marketing offers that their guests will appreciate and take advantage of."
Pricing and Availability
The new CallTower Hospitality Suite is available now. Hotel owners and operations who purchase CallTower's secure, hosted, communications and collaborations solutions can be up and running in just 45 days.