Why does a landline phone still exist in hotel rooms? It turns out there are good reasons

Today there is a huge abundance of sophisticated apps that manage everything related to your stay at the hotel: The reservation, the check-in, room keys, ordering room service, ordering streaming movies to the television in the room and even ordering laundry services at the hotel (including a notification when your laundry is dry and ready). Against this background, the landline phones found in rooms look so outdated. However, many hotels in the United States, and also in Israel, continue to remain loyal to them. And there are several reasons for this.

The website Your Mileage May Vary notes that the primary reason is safety. For example, if an emergency situation arises while you are in the room, the GPS on your phone will not always be able to “tell” the dispatcher at the emergency center exactly where you are located, especially if your location services are turned off. Moreover: Sometimes, we also do not know the exact address of the hotel where we are staying. In contrast, in a call made from a landline phone, this problem usually does not exist.

There is also the issue of dialing the digit 9 to get an outside line. Do you need to dial 9 in order to call the emergency center? As far as the United States is concerned, for several years now there has been a new law that requires hotels to use a system that allows dialing 911 (a unified emergency center) without the need for an outside line. The reason: In 2013, a girl who was staying at a hotel in Texas was involved in an incident of domestic violence and tried to call the emergency center four times, but was unable to reach a dispatcher, simply because she did not dial 9 for an outside line.

And there is also a marketing reason why landline phones still reside in hotel rooms: The hotel can state in its advertisements that as part of the vacation, guests can receive “free calls”. Admit it, that sounds tempting.