Honestly from my experience deploying phone systems into UK hotels, restaurants, and pubs since 2021, hospitality is a bizarre category with constraints nobody else has. Let me walk through what UK hospitality businesses actually need and the traps the generic 'SMB VoIP' marketing completely misses.
The 3 real constraints
1. Guest phones in rooms
If you run a hotel with in-room phones, each phone is a potential extension. A 40 room hotel might have 42 extensions (40 rooms + reception + back office). Most cloud VoIP pricing is per-user per-month, which would be £24 × 42 = £1,008 per month. For phones that ring 3 times a week. That maths does not work.
What you actually want is a 'zero-cost guest extension' model. Some UK VoIP providers offer this, including us at DialPhone, where staff extensions are billed per user but guest-room extensions are billed per bundle (typically £2-4 per room per month). This changes the maths entirely.
Before signing with any provider, ask 'what is the cost model for unused hotel-room extensions'. If they quote full per-user pricing, walk away.
2. Reception after-hours routing
A hotel front desk runs 24/7. A restaurant takes reservations 10:00-22:00. The routing logic is more complex than any office phone system.
Example ruleset for a mid-size hotel we migrated last month.
| Time | Condition | Route |
|---|---|---|
| 07:00-23:00 any day | Main line | Front desk extension, fallback to manager mobile after 8 rings |
| 23:00-07:00 Mon-Thu | Main line | Night porter extension, no fallback (guest must wait) |
| 23:00-07:00 Fri-Sun | Main line | Night porter + on-call manager ring simultaneously |
| Any time | Restaurant booking line | Restaurant host tablet during service, voicemail-to-email otherwise |
| Any time | Spa line | Spa desk 09:00-20:00, voicemail otherwise |
This is 5 different routing profiles running in parallel. Most SMB VoIP platforms assume 'business hours' is one thing. Hospitality has 5+ different business-hour patterns on one system. Make sure yours handles this.
3. POS integration (the forgotten one)
Hospitality runs on POS systems — Lightspeed, Revel, Zettle, Tock, OpenTable. When a guest calls to change a restaurant reservation, you want the call to pop up with their booking details from OpenTable. When a hotel guest calls from their room, you want housekeeping to see which room is calling.
This is done via CTI (Computer Telephony Integration). Every modern VoIP platform supports CTI in theory. In practice, the integration library for OpenTable is maintained by 3 people globally and breaks every few months. Ask your provider specifically 'do you integrate with OpenTable? Lightspeed? Guestline? Mews?' If the answer is a generic 'yes we have CRM integration,' dig deeper.
Our reality, we have working integrations with OpenTable (hotel restaurants) and Mews (PMS). We do not have Tock or Guestline yet. I am not pretending we do.
What every UK hospitality business should test before signing
The simultaneous-call test
A restaurant on a busy Friday night gets 12 simultaneous call attempts during the 18:00-19:00 hour. Most SMB VoIP plans include 5-10 concurrent channels before overflow. Test this by asking 10 staff to dial the main line at once. See what happens. Common failure modes: callers get busy tones, calls dropped, random reconnects.
The WiFi handoff test
Staff using softphones on iPads roam between WiFi access points. Calls should survive the handoff. Most fail. Test it by walking from reception to kitchen to bar while on a call. Note where the audio breaks. A well-designed VoIP app reconnects within 2 seconds. A badly designed one drops the call.
The PSTN fallback test
When your internet drops, your POS stops. What happens to the phones? Good VoIP providers offer PSTN fallback where incoming calls auto-route to a mobile number during outage. Test by unplugging the fibre modem and calling the main line. Does it still ring somewhere? If no, that is a P1 outage waiting to happen.
The 3 features worth paying extra for
Call recording with retention policy — UK ICO regulations around hospitality calls (especially restaurant bookings that take card deposits) mean you MUST record and retain for dispute resolution. Not a nice-to-have.
SMS for booking confirmations — hotels sending 'your booking is confirmed, check-in 15:00' over SMS is table stakes in 2026. VoIP providers with SMS API access make this 10x easier than standalone SMS services.
Multi-site trunking — if you run 3 restaurants, you want 1 bill, 1 admin interface, 1 number plan. Surprisingly few providers do this well for hospitality chains.
What does not matter (despite marketing)
- Video conferencing in every plan. Your sous chef does not need Zoom. Pay less.
- AI transcription. Hospitality calls are short, transactional. Not worth the per-minute.
- International calling at low rates. Most UK hospitality calls are domestic or from named overseas guest markets (France, Germany, US). Do not overpay for rest-of-world minutes you will never use.
The honest pricing check
For a mid-size UK hotel (40 rooms, 8 staff, 1 restaurant, 1 spa), realistic monthly costs from the 14 hospitality migrations we did in 2025.
| Item | Typical |
|---|---|
| 8 staff extensions × £24 | £192 |
| 40 guest rooms × £2 bundle | £80 |
| Restaurant line + spa line + mainline DDIs | £0 (included) |
| PSTN failover | £15 |
| PMS integration setup | £120 one-off |
| Monthly total | £287 |
Compare that to your current ISDN invoice. Most UK hotels are paying £600-1200 for far worse functionality. The case almost always closes itself.
If you are running a UK hotel, restaurant, or hospitality chain and wrestling with your phone system, I am happy to look at the current setup and send back an honest assessment. Not a pitch, just advice. DialPhone.
