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.

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.

Why the cost on the bill is not the real cost

A hotel telephone system relies on a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) to which room handsets, the front desk, internal departments (kitchen, housekeeping, maintenance), and external lines are connected. This system has an acquisition cost, generally amortized over ten years. It has a monthly subscription for lines. And it has a series of secondary costs that are not tracked globally in most establishments.

The telecom operator's invoice shows the subscription and usage. The PBX maintenance contract is in another folder, managed by a different provider. Broken or stolen handsets are ordered on an ad-hoc basis, without the total annual cost ever being calculated. And the time that the front desk or management spends dealing with phone issues is not accounted for anywhere.

This is why most hoteliers significantly underestimate what their telephony is actually costing them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Maintenance all but disappears. A cloud solution is maintained by the provider on the server side. In the room, if communication is handled via the guest's smartphone or a digital interface without dedicated equipment, there is no hardware left to maintain.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

Calculate your savings in 2 minutes

The calculation presented here is based on industry averages. Your actual situation depends on the age of your PABX, your maintenance contract, the replacement rate of your handsets, and the time your team spends on telephone-related issues.

To obtain a personalized estimate based on your establishment's specific characteristics, the GetWelcom simulator allows you to calculate your current actual costs and the potential savings of migrating 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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