Springfield, MA – November 19, 2008 – Thing5, the leader in SIP trunking and hosted PBX services for the hospitality industry, announced today that its cost saving telecommunications platform is being deployed across the entire La Quinta Inns and Suites portfolio. In conjunction with La Quinta, Thing5 is supporting next generation telecommunication technologies in both the corporate owned portfolio and the franchise base.
Thing5 has assisted these hotels with controlling costs, increasing up-time and answered call rates, as well as alleviating the burden of maintaining telecommunications equipment onsite at hotels. Thing5 services have been deployed at over 400 La Quinta hotels, and Thing5 provides WAN management for all 680 La Quinta hotels. These properties utilize a range of Thing5 services, from the complete platform (fixed rate calling, hosted PBX, ACD & voicemail and web-administration) to a stand-alone service such as fixed rate calling. In all cases, the costs savings have been measurable and improvements in efficiencies have been realized. “Our initial deployments of Thing5’s hosted solution have proven that telecommunications is an area that can be easily upgraded while simultaneously reducing costs and making a positive impact on guest services,” commented La Quinta’s Chief Operating Officer Angelo Lombardi. “We are delighted to roll this out to the rest of the La Quinta family and allow our property owners to benefit from this innovative offering.” La Quinta first deployed Thing5’s service in its Montgomery, AL, location in 2005.
La Quinta hotels utilizing Thing5’s economical fixed rate calling have realized cost savings on average of 50% on annual telecommunications expenses. In the event of a PBX failure, new build or renovation, Thing5’s hosted PBX can be deployed at a fraction of the cost of a PBX purchase. Additionally, hotels that have deployed Thing5’s hosted PBX have benefited from the elimination of onsite staff needing to deal with PBX vendors and contractors, as well as improved answered call rates with Thing5’s hosted call routing.
Thing5 is the only fully featured, hospitality-specific hosted PBX solution available to hoteliers. Thing5’s hosted solution provides all of the features that property owners and managers expect – wake-up call management, call accounting and interfaces to property management systems – plus additional features not available from other PBXs, these features allows guest room calls and wakeup calls to be forwarded to cell phones and voicemail as an email for Smartphone and Blackberry users. Thing5’s enterprise solution utilizes burstable IP trunking; this enables on-demand sharing of under-utilized trunk capacity. Thing5 clients take advantage of its fixed rate calling, reducing their monthly telecommunications expense immediately – in most case by 40-60%.Thing5 provides all of its solutions via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.
About LQ Management LLC
LQ Manage  ment L.L.C. is one of the largest operators of limited-service hotels in the United States. Based in Dallas, Texas, the Company operates and provides franchise services to more than 680 hotels in 45 states and Canada and Mexico, under the La Quinta Inn® and La Quinta Inn & Suites® brands. For reservations or more information about La Quinta, please visit www.lq.com or call 1-800-SLEEPLQ.
Contact:
Teresa Ferguson
Director Public Relations
La Quinta (214) 492.6937