When we opened The Timberline, I was firmly in the “we don’t need a phone” camp.
We had just renovated the property and reopened in February. Guests could email us. They could message through booking platforms. We responded quickly. It felt modern, efficient, and clean. Most importantly, we didn’t need to staff a phone 24/7.
Or did we? Guests still have needs at all hours. Missing an email from a guest locked out at 11 PM after a long drive is just as damaging as missing a call. We hadn’t removed urgency from the system; we had simply made it harder for guests to get timely help.
We operated without a phone number until December, when a guest wrote to say he was about to book our most expensive room for a full week. He was hesitating because he couldn’t find a phone number; he wanted to know someone was reachable.
So we added a VoIP line. And immediately ran into the next problem: how do you staff it without creating more fragmentation?
At the same time, we were still using email heavily. Now the person on call overnight had to monitor voicemail, email, booking-platform messages, and occasionally personal devices. Instead of simplifying communication, we had layered it.
That’s when the real question became clear. This wasn’t about landlines versus apps. It was about channel design.
Email is not a real-time channel. Across industries, SMS open rates hover near 98%, while email open rates sit closer to 20%. That gap isn’t a marketing talking point; it reflects how people actually behave. Email is something you return to. Text is something that interrupts you.
In hospitality, interruption matters.
When a door code fails.
When a guest is arriving late.
When someone wants to extend a stay.
When an issue needs resolution before a review is written.
These are not email moments.
Over the past several months, I’ve spoken with more than a dozen hotel owners and operators about how they manage communication. Some rely on landlines and on-property networks. Others try to eliminate voice entirely and lean on email or apps. Many run text-only systems that can’t receive calls. Almost all juggle multiple inboxes.
Not one described a system where voice and text live together cleanly, with shared visibility across the team. This shouldn’t’ be this difficult.
Existing solutions fall very short:
A fully phone-less model introduces friction.
An email-first model introduces delay.
A voice-only model anchors communication to a physical location.
Voice and SMS together solve a different problem. They allow guests to reach a real person immediately when necessary, while preserving conversational continuity in a format that teams can manage collaboratively.
The question is not whether hotels should eliminate phones. It’s whether they should redesign communication around how guests actually move.
Guests are mobile, and their expectations are immediate. Hospitality is time-sensitive.
