The Bull Hotel

Background

The Bull Hotel is Peterborough’s premier hotel and is the only AA recognised four-star hotel in the city centre. Originally dating back to the seventeenth century, this grade two listed building has, over the years, been carefully restored and tastefully refurbished, to provide guests with a high degree of comfort. Offering 118 bedrooms in total, the contemporary rooms all include free WiFi, flat-screen TVs, and tea and coffee making facilities, whilst upgraded rooms offer air-conditioning and some include fridges. The hotel also provides facilities for meetings and conferences
alongside a restaurant and bar.

The Bull Hotel is Peterborough’s premier hotel and is the only AA recognised four-star hotel in the city centre. Originally dating back to the seventeenth century, this grade two listed building has, over the years, been carefully restored and tastefully refurbished, to provide guests with a high degree of comfort. Offering 118 bedrooms in total, the contemporary rooms all include free WiFi, flat-screen TVs, and tea and coffee making facilities, whilst upgraded rooms offer air-conditioning and some include fridges. The hotel also provides facilities for meetings and conferences
alongside a restaurant and bar.

Drivers for Change

For over 30 years The Bull Hotel had been using a BT Regent phone system, which, in the words of the their Maintenance Manager, Howard Vacca, was becoming ‘antiquated’. “It actually still worked incredibly well and did everything we wanted it to do, the problem was that BT no longer supported the system; we hadn’t been covered by maintenance for two years and spare parts were becoming increasingly difficult to get hold of,” said Mr Vacca. “We desperately needed a new system – but we wanted to ensure that the one we eventually chose had the potential to last us for another 30 years!.” “We’d previously been speaking to GreenCity Solutions about the PeterboroughCore project, and phone systems had cropped up in conversation. Being a local company, we viewed GreenCity Solutions as a key potential technology supplier and by that time we’d been looking for a new phone system for about two years. We’d talked to other comms suppliers, but none of them were convincing and they certainly didn’t take the time to explain things in a clear and concise manner in the way that Rob from GreenCity Solutions did,” continued Mr Vacca.

The Way Forward

“We’d already received quotations from BT, Mitel and Panasonic so we had an idea of general costs, but we really liked the SpliceCom system proposed by GreenCity Solutions. It’s 100% British made and very well priced. It actually came in under the other quotes, and gave us a whole lot more for our money,” enthused Mr Vacca. “In addition the SpliceCom PCS 552s seemed the perfect IP handsets for our office staff to quickly and easily transfer calls between departments. In the end it was a very easy choice for us to make.” In the end the Bull Hotel chose a SpliceCom 5100 IP PBX as the basis for their system, with analogue phones for all the bedrooms and PCS 552 IP Phones for the reception, bar, restaurant and back of house areas.

“The installation was fantastic and was completely seamless – we experienced no downtime whatsoever,” continued Mr Vacca. “The new SpliceCom system was installed next to our existing BT system, we then switched the trunk lines over. There was no disruption to guest services, no complaints and definitely no loss of business. We planned for up to an hour of downtime, so this went far beyond our expectations, it all worked from the off.

The New System

“We’d already received quotations from BT, Mitel and Panasonic so we had an idea of general costs, but we really liked the SpliceCom system proposed by GreenCity Solutions. It’s 100% British made and very well priced. It actually came in under the other quotes, and gave us a whole lot more for our money,” enthused Mr Vacca. “In addition the SpliceCom PCS 552s seemed the perfect IP handsets for our office staff to quickly and easily transfer calls between departments. In the end it was a very easy choice for us to make.” In the end the Bull Hotel chose a SpliceCom 5100 IP PBX as the basis for their system, with analogue phones for all the bedrooms and PCS 552 IP Phones for the reception, bar, restaurant and back of house areas.

The Future

The introduction of the SpliceCom system allows The Bull Hotel to offer a far more personal and memorable guest experience, prompting staff to set features such as a Wake Up call upon the guests checking in. It’s also allowed them to replace their previous pager system, allowing them respond far quicker should a guest contact reception out of hours. In addition they’ve deployed software recommended by SpliceCom, Tiger TMS, that merges the new telephone system with their front of house software, Paragon. The integration means that the hotel can offer a far more personalised service. For example, rather than a room number, the
guests names now appear on the telephone display as they ring reception, allowing staff to deliver a more personal touch to the guests that stay at The Bull Hotel. “Our Head Office is extremely pleased with the new system, and is looking to roll it out to more hotels and offices. As for The Bull Hotel right now, it fair to say that our new telephone system does more than we ever expected!” concludes Howard Vacca.

It all went so smoothly that I can’t see any reason why we wouldn’t extend the system to the nine other sites in the Peel Hotels group