The Bell Inn is formerly a privately owned pub by the Crosthwaite Eyre family and has been part of their family for over 230 years making it one of the oldest family owned pubs in Hampshire. It’s a love story between the family and the New Forest which is centuries old and which originated in the 11th Century.
Today, The Bell Inn is under new management by Stellar Asset Management working in partnership with Ben Blackburn Golf. With new management in place, a refurbishment project went underway, and with business requiring the best communication systems in place, they approached Vostel to provide telephony services for their hotel, bar, restaurant and golf club.
The Bell Inn is a very busy hotel, with two golf courses, a bar and restaurant. The existing telephone system was using ISDN2e which is close to the end of its life and shortly would no longer work. The system itself was hard to make changes too and the telephone handsets were wall mounted making them restrictive to use. The hotel rooms had standard telephone sockets in them, that would only support traditional analogue phones.
The client required a modern and flexible system which was easy to use and to avoid disruption, the existing cabling infrastructure would be retained.
Utilising a mixture of IP handsets for the hotel operation and standard analogue ones for the rooms, Vostel provided the perfect solution. We did this by installing a Voice gateway. This is a stand-alone appliance that converts analogue to IP (Internet Protocol) and vice versa, allowing connections between a legacy telephony infrastructure and a modern Hosted VoIP network.
We installed cordless handsets for the hotel operations areas which gave the team the flexibility to be mobile whilst on a call. The reception telephone had a keypad extension offering a speed dial facility to each room and department.
Another benefit to using our Hosted VoIP network was the seamless integration of telephone communications within the separate buildings. The club house is located 50 metres away from the main hotel, however can use all of the features and benefits as if they were in the same building.
