What does in-room telephony really cost? (the calculation no one does)

Most hoteliers know the amount of their phone bill. Few know the actual cost of their telephony. Calculate your savings at getwelcom.com

They are not the same thing. The subscription is visible on an invoice. The real cost includes items that appear nowhere in the accounts, or are listed under such different headings that the connection is never made. Maintenance, equipment replacement, staff time spent dealing with technical issues, and missed opportunities due to out-of-order handsets: all of this accumulates, silently, year after year.

Doing this calculation just once often changes how a hotelier views the issue of telephony.

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Why your phone bill doesn't reflect the true cost

A hotel telephone system relies on a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) that connects guest room phones, the front desk, internal departments such as the kitchen, housekeeping and maintenance, as well as external lines. Beyond the initial investment, which is typically amortized over ten years, there are monthly line charges and a range of additional costs that most hotels do not track as a whole.

Your telecom provider’s bill only shows line charges and usage.

The PBX maintenance contract is billed separately and may even be managed by a different provider.

Broken or stolen handsets are replaced as needed, often without anyone calculating the total annual cost.

On top of that, the time spent by front desk staff or management dealing with phone-related issues is rarely accounted for.

As a result, most hoteliers significantly underestimate the true cost of their telephone system.

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The 4 hidden cost items

1. Subscriptions and lines

This is the visible item. But it deserves to be examined in detail. A hotel PBX requires several incoming lines to prevent external calls from being blocked, one or more ISDN or SIP lines for communications, and sometimes a specific service contract with the operator for managing internal calls. Depending on the size of the establishment and the existing contract, this item varies between 150 and 600 euros per month for a mid-sized hotel.

Added to this is the depreciation cost of the PBX hardware itself. A system installed for a 40 to 60-room hotel represents an initial investment of 8,000 to 25,000 euros depending on the brand and options. Spread over ten years, or 800 to 2,500 euros per year, this cost is added to the subscription without ever appearing on it.

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2. Maintenance

PBX maintenance contracts generally represent between 10% and 15% of the hardware cost per year. On a 12,000-euro system, this represents 1,200 to 1,800 euros annually. This amount covers preventive maintenance and repairs, but not necessarily replacement parts, depending on the terms of the contract.

Interventions not covered by the maintenance contract, which often happen at the worst possible time (a weekend in high season, when the PBX goes down and half the rooms are unreachable), can add 300 to 800 euros per incident.

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3. Handset replacement

Hotel room telephone handsets often have a real-world lifespan shorter than their theoretical one. They are handled by hundreds of different guests each year, subjected to drops, liquid spills, and pulled cables. Not to mention theft, which primarily affects handsets in high-turnover establishments.

A PABX-compatible replacement handset costs between 40 and 120 euros depending on the model. For a 50-room hotel with a 15% to 20% annual replacement rate, that adds up to an extra 300 to 1,200 euros per year costs that appear in neither the subscription nor the maintenance contract.

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4. Lost time

This is the least visible, yet potentially most significant, expense. When a phone in a room stops working, someone has to deal with it. The front desk logs the report. Maintenance checks the wiring. If the issue lies with the PABX, the service provider is contacted and a repair window is negotiated.

During this time, the room is either occupied by a guest who cannot reach the front desk (a service issue leading to potential negative reviews) or taken out of service to avoid this (resulting in lost revenue). Diagnosing and replacing a handset ties up between 45 minutes and two hours of a technician's or manager's time.

If a 50-room hotel handles an average of two such incidents per month, at an average fully loaded hourly cost of 80 euros, that represents 1,900 to 3,200 euros per year spent dealing with phone issues.

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A quantified example for a 50-room hotel

Aggregating these four cost centers for a typical 50-room property reveals a reality quite different from what the monthly invoice suggests.

Operator subscription and lines: 2,400 to 7,200 euros per year.

PABX depreciation (over 10 years): 800 to 2,500 euros per year.

Maintenance contract: 1,200 to 1,800 euros per year.

Handset replacement: 300 to 1,200 euros per year.

Lost time (estimated at 2 incidents/month): 1,900 to 3,200 euros per year.

Annual total: between 6,600 and 15,900 euros depending on the age of the system, the maintenance contract, and the level of wear and tear. This equates to between 132 and 318 euros per room, per year.

This calculation does not account for the opportunity cost associated with outages, nor the impact on guest reviews when communication issues during a stay are not resolved promptly.

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How a VoIP solution changes each of these cost centers

Replacing a PABX with a VoIP or digital solution structurally alters each of these four areas.

The subscription becomes a cloud-hosted SIP line, requiring no dedicated hardware.

The monthly cost is significantly lower than a traditional PABX subscription.

And the setup does not require comparable initial capital investment.

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Maintenance is virtually eliminated. Cloud-based solutions are maintained by the provider on the server side. In guest rooms, when communication takes place through the guest’s smartphone or a digital interface that requires no dedicated equipment, there is almost no hardware left to maintain.

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Handset replacement costs drop to zero if fixed phones are removed. This is where the savings are most immediate and visible: according to data collected by GetWelcom from its client base, establishments that remove in-room phones in favor of an Atout France-compliant digital solution reduce their maintenance costs by an average of 80%.

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Lost time decreases proportionally. Incidents related to telephone hardware vanish along with the hardware itself. Guest requests are handled through digital channels that create a paper trail, allowing for structured tracking and reducing missed or duplicate tasks.

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To understand in detail how a hotel VoIP telephony solution effectively replaces the PABX while remaining compliant with Atout France requirements; the detailed use case explains the conditions for the transition.

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The figures presented here are based on industry averages. Your actual costs will vary depending on the age of your PABX, your maintenance contract, how often handsets need to be replaced, and the time your team spends dealing with telephone-related issues.

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For a more accurate estimate tailored to your property, the GetWelcom simulator helps you calculate your current costs and estimate the potential savings of switching to a compliant digital solution.

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The question of regulatory compliance for this substitution is addressed in the article on the 2022 Atout France reform, which specifies the conditions under which a digital solution validly replaces in-room telephones during an inspection.

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Calculate your savings in 2 minutes

The figures presented here are based on industry averages. Your actual costs will vary depending on the age of your PABX, your maintenance contract, how often handsets need to be replaced, and the time your team spends dealing with telephone-related issues.

For a more accurate estimate tailored to your property, the GetWelcom simulator helps you calculate your current costs and estimate the potential savings of switching to a compliant digital solution.

Calculate your savings at getwelcom.com

Sources: Observatoire de l'hôtellerie indépendante française, 2023 operating cost data (UMIH); AittelCom, 2022 study on PABX system costs in hotels with 20 to 100 rooms; Ministry in charge of Tourism, tourist accommodation classification guide, criteria applicable since 2022.

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