Every detail matters in hospitality. A missed room-service request, a delayed check-in note, or a housekeeping mix-up slows down operations and undercuts the guest experience your brand has worked so hard to cultivate.
In 2025, when guest expectations are sky-high and staff turnover is a stubborn reality, the old patchwork of walkie-talkies, sticky notes, and WhatsApp groups simply won’t cut it.
Unified communications and collaboration platforms are rapidly becoming the digital backbone of the hospitality space. Whether you’re a boutique hotel with a lean team or a global operator juggling time zones, languages, and hundreds of staff, a prudently selected UC platform connects every person, process, and property, elevating bog-standard coordination into exceptional service.
But not all platforms are created equal. Some excel in mobile-first frontline environments; others shine at corporate scale. This guide unpacks the comms headaches hospitality leaders grapple with in 2025, what to look for in a future-ready UC platform, and how the biggest players compare when it comes to keeping your teams aligned and your guests delighted.
- Yeastar To Elevate Hospitality Comms With PBX Hotel Management Module
- UC Hospitality Case Study in Focus: Avaya and the Old Mill
The 2025 Communication Challenge Encompasses More Guests, Higher Expectations, and No Room for Missteps
Today’s hospitality sector is incredibly dynamic but unforgiving. Occupancy rates are back with a vengeance, guest preferences have shifted towards ultra-personalised experiences, and digital expectations are soaring. But behind the scenes, operational complexity is growing just as fast.
Large hotel groups juggle the likes of global staffing shortages, language barriers, and elaborate compliance demands. Smaller operations face the opposite challenge, such as running lean teams that need to do more and faster with substantially less margin for error.
Communication habitually breaks down between departments, shifts, or locations at the seams, whether it’s a city-centre hotel or a coastal resort. One missed maintenance alert or a misplaced VIP arrival note can snowball into the damaging impact of service failures, negative reviews, and lost loyalty.
That’s why a strong UC&C platform is absolutely essential to running a responsive, resilient hospitality business in which front-desk, back-of-house, and corporate teams are always in sync.
What Hospitality Leaders Should Look for from UC&C in 2025
Not all comms platforms are hospitality-ready, but the best solutions for 2025 are designed with the realities of hotels, resorts, and guest service at their core.
Mobility comes first. Your staff don’t rigidly sit at desks but move through hallways, kitchens, and lobbies. A great platform empowers them with instant voice, video, and messaging on mobile devices without compromising security or adding convoluted complexity.
Ease of use is paramount. With high staff turnover and seasonal hires, tools must be intuitive enough for a new employee to use confidently within minutes, not hours of training.
Integration can be enormously helpful. Look for platforms that connect seamlessly with your property management system (PMS), CRM, guest messaging platforms, and service management tools. Context is everything, and siloed systems frequently mean missed moments.
Security and uptime must be as close to impeccable as possible. Guest data is naturally sacred, and any UC platform must meet strict compliance standards, offer end-to-end encryption, and deliver near-perfect reliability, especially during peak periods.
AI and automation are the new frontiers. From summarising shift handovers to detecting service delays before they escalate, AI can now act as a differentiator in how speedily and consistently you respond to guests.
With that in mind, here’s how the top platforms stack up and which types of hospitality operations they serve best.
Microsoft Teams is the Powerhouse for Enterprise Hospitality Brands
For global hotel groups, Microsoft Teams is a natural fit. If your IT stack already lives in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, Teams offers deep integration, centralised security, and enterprise-grade scalability.
It shines particularly in corporate and regional offices and large properties with multi-layered teams and elaborate coordination needs. With Microsoft Copilot now embedded, Teams also transforms into a proactive assistant, generating shift summaries, standardising guest comms, and pulling reports on team performance.
Where Teams excels: Large hotel groups, corporate hospitality, conference centres, and chains with in-house IT.
The trade-off? It’s less plug-and-play than other platforms, and frontline staff may need additional configuration or training to unlock its potential fully in back-of-house settings.
RingCentral is the Agile Communicator for Multi-Site and Mobile Teams
RingCentral hits the sweet spot for hospitality organisations that need flexibility, speed, and stellar mobile usability. Its cloud-based UCaaS platform offers crystal-clear voice, video, SMS and team messaging, all wrapped in a user-friendly app that works effectively across smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
RingCentral particularly suits mid-size hotel groups or franchises that want strong integrations with PMS and contact centre systems and robust guest service features like automated call routing, real-time language translation, and AI-driven sentiment analysis.
Where RingCentral shines: Multi-property groups, franchised hotel brands, upscale resorts with mobile-first operations.
Watch out for: Licensing costs can add up with large frontline teams, and integration into niche hospitality tools may require custom work.
Zoom is the Simple, Scalable Favourite for Staff Coordination and Training
Zoom has evolved well beyond its pandemic-era image. In hospitality, the platform has found a further life as a fast, frictionless platform for team collaboration, staff training, remote property coordination, and even virtual guest services.
Its incredibly intuitive design makes it ideal for organisations with seasonal staff, younger teams, or properties in high-turnover regions. Zoom’s AI Companion offers features like automatic note-taking, meeting summaries, and quick translations, making it ideal for multilingual environments.
Where Zoom fits best: Boutique hotels, independent properties, lifestyle brands, and hospitality groups focused on training or regional collaboration.
Limitations? It’s not traditionally as deeply integrated into PMS or CRM systems as others, so it may need to be part of a broader toolkit.
Cisco Webex is the Secure Workhorse for High-End and High-Complexity Operators
Cisco Webex remains an appealing UC&C platform for high-end hotels and resorts that demand marble-solid reliability, advanced security, and complete enterprise oversight.
Its AI-enabled calling, messaging and meetings platform supports everything from remote site management to multilingual guest engagement. Webex also excels in analytics, giving CIOs and IT leaders deep insight into team performance, usage trends, and network health.
Webex is especially compelling in smart hotel environments, where IoT, guest apps, and automated systems must be orchestrated from a single pane of glass.
Best for: Luxury brands, international resort chains, enterprise hospitality firms with in-house IT infrastructure.
Potential drawbacks: It may feel like overkill for smaller properties or independent hotels without dedicated IT resources.
Your UC Platform Is Now Part of the Guest Experience
Hospitality thrives in meaningful human connection. But in 2025, that connection relies on rapid, frictionless, innovative comms tools humming daintily behind the scenes. Choosing the right UC platform is fundamentally about how your staff serves, your teams collaborate, and your brand fulfils its promise.
Microsoft Teams offers unmatched integration for enterprise-scale operators. RingCentral delivers agility and frontline strength for dynamic, multi-site groups. Zoom brings simplicity and scalability for independent hotels focused on people-first coordination. Cisco Webex anchors premium brands with advanced control and analytics.
The best platform for your organisation is ultimately the one you’ve made an informed and substantive decision on, one that lets your people work smarter and makes every guest feel like the only one who matters.
After all, great hospitality is seamless. So should your communications be.
