Fairview Hotel Collection
The Customer
The Fairview Hotel Collection, owned and operated by Kanta Enterprises, offers guests a luxurious diversity of choice accommodations across the United Kingdom. They strive to provide the ultimate hotel experience by offering warm welcomes, quality surroundings, and great service. There’s a room ready for any budget from their affordable Ibis Hotels brand to their world-class Mercure Hotel situated in Bloomsbury, one of London’s most fashionable areas.
Business Challenges
To ensure their hotels remain a leading provider of quality accommodations in the UK hospitality sector, the Fairview Hotel Collection decided to refurbish and update their hotels. As part of this, their aging communications infrastructure needed to be given a thorough rehaul in a short timeframe. Not only did the Fairview Collection want to update the legacy PBX servers operating at their many locations, they desired a uniform, integrated system that would connect between rooms and locations seamlessly. Additionally, they wanted to ensure their connection to the outside world was not interrupted with the upcoming ISDN switch-off across the UK and the European Union. To accomplish this, they needed a modern VoIP-based communications infrastructure. Last but certainly not least, they desired both modern Unified Communications (UC) features and effective cost control over their communications infrastructure across all thirteen locations
Solutions From Sangoma
Working with their internet service provider, who happened to also use and sell Sangoma products and services, the Fairview Hotel Collection embarked on a complete refresh of their voice and data network infrastructure. Completely rewiring hotels, rooms were equipped with Power over Ethernet (PoE) cable instead of older analog line. This move successfully took their voice network off ISDN infrastructure while keeping their network securely isolated from the outside world. With the newly updated infrastructure, Fairview Hotels deployed FreePBX and PBXact IP PBX servers at each of their hotels, along with a VoIP intercom system to facilitate announcements and notifications to their guests. To complete their solution, every room, office, and public area at their hotels was equipped with reliable Sangoma IP phones to ensure easy access to a phone for every user in the hotel.
The Results
The hotels’ users immediately appreciated the change from their outdated legacy phone system. With the PBXact and FreePBX architecture, the hotels have a uniformity of communications systems that they did not have previously. And using the PBXact/FreePBX platform, the hotels are able to be on the same service plans but customize by extension which features are needed. The owners and managers were very pleased by the pricing of the hardware, with the total price of their systems being much lower than products offered by competitors. The IT team at the hotels really appreciated how easy it was to get in touch with Sangoma to get questions answered fast and solutions to problems arising in various locations as multiple hotels were worked on at the same time. Overall, the Fairview Hotel Collection, with Sangoma, was able to elevate their communications and keep guest satisfaction at an all time high while saving money and gaining access to the features and support they did not have on their legacy business phone system.