Telecom Billing Problems Can Pose a Threat to Hospitality Industry

One Chicago hotel was billed by a carrier for calls originating from another company located in the same area. The hotel had no idea it was footing the bill for the other firm's phone calls, reports Hotel and Motel Management.

An 800-room hotel in a major city, which would normally have qualified for digital service that provides direct answer supervision, was encouraged instead by a vendor to install analog trunks with the vendor's own answer-detection equipment. The digital trunks were less expensive and would have provided better service with more advanced technology.

For smaller hotels this may not result in a loss of a lot of money, but at business properties with a good activity level, telecommunication problems can add up to significant costs. A hospitality call accounting system can help hotels and motels with telephone call billing and profit reports accurately generated on a real-time basis. Reconciliation of call accounting records with the property management system saves hundreds of hours.

A quality hotel call accounting system should offer the storage of call records beyond the normal 24-hour audit period, typically 60 days of calls. It should also be able to generate a guest bill if the property management system is down for an extended period of time and the night audit report should match calls and charges that have been sent to the PMS. Also, look for telephone call profit reports that are accurately generated on a real-time basis. Reconciliation of call accounting records with the property management system saves hundreds of hours.

Commonly available is a special rating table operation that enables calls that have been placed to newly created area and office codes to be billed, even though they have not yet been programmed into the rate tables. This insures call records are priced and stored for guest checkout or sent to the property management system (PMS) and billed to a guest folio. Capturing and storing all call detail records allows management to oversee both guest and employee phone usage and full trunk usage, thus allowing the best management of long distance carriers, the number of trunks needed and reconciliation of phone bills.

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Author, Karen Ritz, VP Business Development for TelSoft Solutions, writes on the business benefits of call accounting and call detail record technology. More information can be found at http://www.telsoft-solutions.com.