In room land lines

Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum

Help Support Bed & Breakfast / Short Term Rental Host Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Colleen848

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 23, 2011
Messages
98
Reaction score
0
As I am trying to plan the opening of my B&B I thought I would ask more advice concerning a land line phone.
Does anyone provide in room phones or a general use landline phone for their guests?
I realize most people use cell phones but I would like to know if this is something that people would use or would I be better off concentrating on other amenities.
In an unrelated topic I will have wi-fi and would be able to fax documents for the guests.
Thanks again.
 
As long as you have a good cell signal, I would skip the land line. We have no cell signal so we provide a land line to the guests and I STILL get some irritated guests. Like I have control over the cell signal!
 
We don't offer land lines in the rooms. We do have a phone in the library which guests may use, but they never do. Everyone uses their cells. Nobody goes anywhere without them.
RIki
 
Fax documents? This is 2012. Email is all you need, and online reservations.
Is there cell service there? If so, no landlines required.
 
My guests have cell phones. We have a landline extension in one room (pre-dates B & B and handy for me if upstairs cleaning). Even when we have guests visiting locals and tell them it is free for local calls, they tell us - we have our cells but thank you. It DID hurt me when we had a local family stay here (I took pity on a hard-luck situation and provided 2 rooms for the price of one - insurance company paid) and they did not have cell phones so used mine as if it was theirs - even answering my phone! If I EVER go brain dead like that again, I will remove the phone BEFORE they come in. Do not waste any money on landlines for the rooms. Make sure you have a strong wifi signal - they bring their laptops, Kindle Fire, etc. I have not needed the fax for guests for a LOOOOOONNNGGG time.
 
I had someone ask about faxing a document once. I just scanned it on my scanner/printer and emailed it for them.
Riki
 
yup unless there is no signal-i would not bother with a landline, and if you have a landline personal phone I would make that available to guests if they don't have a cell phone-only local calls though. Most guests have cell phones now a days...use your $$ for other amenities such as wify....
 
When we first came here 2005 there was a switch board and each room had its own phone and it printed you a list each day of how much money to charge to each room. In 6 months the guests spent about $6 and it was about $400 a year to have the system serviced and if you needed it fixing we decided it just wasn't worth it. Pulled everything out and never looked back. We have about 2 little old ladies who require a phone and as we have any landline numbers called free on evenings and weekends if they use the phone then I don't charge as its free for me and good customer service. During the day I charge what i think is reasonable. But honestly we have two lines one for the card machine and fax machine as the online booking agents we use send bookings by fax and one line for the B&B however 90% of the time its diverted to my mobile anyway, however a side benefit of that is you can ring out on that landline while talking to people on the phone (ie me and DH).
 
Skip the land lines. Focus on other amenities. Of course, if you live somewhere that cell phones don't work, you might want at least one phone guests could use with a credit card.
 
If you DID have a phone in each room, would it be an extension of your personal or business phone? Could people in one room listen in on conversatons of another room, or the inn's business. And what if they call Australia and talk for 2 hours?
Surely having each room have it's own private line and phone number would be very expensive.
 
Land lines in a guest room? So it can take up space and never do anything? People have this odd thing called a mobile phone now. We leave a cordless if they want to use it. But basically Google Voice, Skype and mobile phones cover it.
Fax line? What's that. You can get a virtual fax if you really need it and you receive your faxes as a PDF file. And you can send an email and it gets delivered to someone who apparently doesn't know what the Internet is and why we use it.
Only people at bureaucracies use antiques like typewriters and fax machines.
 
Land lines in a guest room? So it can take up space and never do anything? People have this odd thing called a mobile phone now. We leave a cordless if they want to use it. But basically Google Voice, Skype and mobile phones cover it.
Fax line? What's that. You can get a virtual fax if you really need it and you receive your faxes as a PDF file. And you can send an email and it gets delivered to someone who apparently doesn't know what the Internet is and why we use it.
Only people at bureaucracies use antiques like typewriters and fax machines.
 
No in room land lines here because most use their cell phones. But we do have a phone availble in the hallway if their cell isn't working.
 
We've had guests ask if they could send and receive faxes when they are engaged in business deals where a digital signature is not sufficient. It's rare so I wouldn't bother mentioning the fax unless someone specifically asks. Don't forget to charge for it. Many times it is an international call and 10 pages!
 
We've had guests ask if they could send and receive faxes when they are engaged in business deals where a digital signature is not sufficient. It's rare so I wouldn't bother mentioning the fax unless someone specifically asks. Don't forget to charge for it. Many times it is an international call and 10 pages!.
The company that we use is $36 a year for 25 pages a month or $72 a year for 200 pages a month. I pay a whole 5c a page to China. The worst is Cuba, Diego Garcia and Nauru at over $2 a page. Well... there is Iridium and Immersat, which are just silly at $9 to $17 a page! And we can just send a PDF and have that fax out.
 
I have two phone lines. One is my business line that goes only to me and then I have separate line that is my residential line but it is also used for the fax machine/copier. I have a cordless phone system from Radio Shack connected to it as well. I have the base unit in my room that plugs into the wall jack and each guest room has a cordless phone that connects to the base wirelessly so no lines are needed in the individual rooms. I am able to call the rooms and they can call me if needed. The phones are used occasionally. I have great AT & T cell phone reception but other phone providers like Sprint don't work. Often times guests can not use their cell phones. I do get business people coming in from time to time wanting signed documents faxed somewhere. I don't charge to fax them but will if I have an incoming just for the cost of the paper and ink. I don't have a scanner for my computer so it is just easier to use the fax machine. I also have a low flat rate of about $15 for the A T & T land line with unlimited calling anywhere in the US so it is not too bad.
 
Guest land line phones are an unnecessary expense for your size of place. Most folks have mobile phones. In fact, more and more people are even ditching their personal land lines in favor of just having mobile phone service.
I only had two guests in two years require a land line and they were International guests who did not have a mobile for the U.S. I had a portable phone for guest use in each of our houses that ran off our second line (which was only used for running the cc machine and faxes). This worked perfectly for those guests without mobiles. Other guests would sometimes use the portable phone to call locally here but that was rare.
 
I don't even have a land line, why do they need one?
wink_smile.gif
 
Colleen, you might consider MagicJack. They sell them at Walmart here, so they should be available everywhere. Consumer Reports investigated it a couple of years ago and said it really works. It's a good product.
You plug any regular phone into the phone jack on the little MagicJack box, then plug the MagicJack into your computer modem (cable modem or DSL modem). Then you just use the phone like any regular phone, but the calls are going over your Internet connection rather than the phone company lines.
All calls are free, even international. Directory assistance is also free. They assign a free phone number to each MagicJack box, so all guests would have a private line with their own phone number.
An alternate way to hook it up is to plug the MagicJack box into a USB port on an Internet-connected computer, so IF the guest has a laptop, they could make calls over WIFI without need to run a cable from the guestroom to your Intenet router.
The MagicJack costs about $35 (one-time cost). The first year of service is free. After that it's $20/year.
 
Colleen, you might consider MagicJack. They sell them at Walmart here, so they should be available everywhere. Consumer Reports investigated it a couple of years ago and said it really works. It's a good product.
You plug any regular phone into the phone jack on the little MagicJack box, then plug the MagicJack into your computer modem (cable modem or DSL modem). Then you just use the phone like any regular phone, but the calls are going over your Internet connection rather than the phone company lines.
All calls are free, even international. Directory assistance is also free. They assign a free phone number to each MagicJack box, so all guests would have a private line with their own phone number.
An alternate way to hook it up is to plug the MagicJack box into a USB port on an Internet-connected computer, so IF the guest has a laptop, they could make calls over WIFI without need to run a cable from the guestroom to your Intenet router.
The MagicJack costs about $35 (one-time cost). The first year of service is free. After that it's $20/year..
That's a great idea.
I had that rolling around in my head along with the other loose screws, lol but your pointing out the benefits helped alot.
The cell phone reception here varies by provider.
At one time I recall you could get a toll free number for people to call you on but I can't remember where or if it still exisits. Have you heard of it?
Thanks again
 
Back
Top