Best Western Carlton Blackpool Springboards Starboard Hotels 3CX Rollout
Starboard Hotels is one of the most widely known and reputable hospitality franchises, with a number of the most popular destinations in its portfolio—Holiday Inn Express and Days Inn to name a few. But it is Starboard’s Best Western franchise that recently faced a telecommunications tragedy. The hotel needed to find a replacement Hotel PBX pronto, and after reviewing the features, cost and ease of deployment of various solutions, the answer was clear.
The Challenge
With a previous Panasonic®* PBX nearing end of life, Best Western Carlton Blackpool faced an urgent need to find a modern solution that would enable it to maintain its reputation for high-level customer service. In doing so, Starboard was looking for a successful use case that in turn could lead to a wider roll-out across its other sites.
It was imperative to find a cost-effective, but powerful Unified Communications (UC) solution. After briefly considering several other alternatives, it quickly became clear to Best Western’s Director of IT, Mohammad Umer, that 3CX offered an unparalleled answer.
3CX Offers a Solution
In the hospitality industry, it doesn’t matter whether guests are traveling for business or pleasure. They both require high attention to detail, seamless communication capabilities, and the assurance that someone will always be there to meet their needs. It was imperative, therefore, that a migration to the hotel’s new system incur no downtime.
The entire process, from installation to deployment, took just several hours, during which business went on as usual without any downtime. With a staff of only 20, it was also critical that no added time was taken away for training purposes. Fortunately, as 3CX was intuitively designed for the user in mind, this goal could be easily achieved. Employees immediately understood how to use the system, and were able to remain focused on their primary responsibilities.
“The 3CX phone system has ticked all the boxes for Best Western Carlton Hotel Blackpool. Replacing the old, outdated PBX has meant we no longer need expensive maintenance contracts to keep the system going, savings thousands of pounds each year. The 3CX system is also very reliable. As the 2nd hotel to implement 3CX, we are confident that we will be able to use our success as a launch pad to roll out 3CX across all sites in the coming months.”
Mohammad Umer, Director of IT, Best Western Carlton Blackpool
The Results
In moving away from a product facing end of life, to an industry-leading 3CX solution, Best Western Carlton Hotel Blackpool has seen comprehensive gains across the board. Cost savings have come through reduced phone bills and maintenance considerations, while employees have been able to communicate more effectively with both their guests and internally—having even more impact on the job. Given the high success of this project, travelers to Best Western and other Starboard Hotels properties may soon get to see the benefits of 3CX for themselves.
The Customer
The Best Western Carlton Hotel is one of Blackpool’s best-established hotels, sitting on the quieter North Promenade overlooking the famous promenade and the Irish Sea. The hotel is ideally situated for visiting all the attractions of the UK’s No1 Holiday resort as well as alternative locations along the Fylde coast.
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