Send Message to All Guests

Sometimes, it may be desirable to send a message to all guest rooms to provide time sensitive information, such as an announcement of a breakfast special in the hotel restaurant or that the hotel pool will be closed for maintenance during certain hours on a certain day.  The DV2000/DV4 can easily support this.

Unlike the other functions listed in this section. sending a message to all guests is not performed using any of the four standard methods (PMS, InnDesk, hospitality administration menu or a guest room code).  Instead, it is handled using distribution mailboxes.

Create the Distribution List

To configure your system so that you can send messages to all guests at once, you must:

You can also create other distribution mailboxes for other groupings of guests (such as by floor).

Note: Use distribution mailboxes, not group mailboxes.  A group mailbox is intended to contain only checked in rooms in its member list; as soon as a room is checked out, it is removed from the list.  A distribution list, however, is persistent.  Any room added to a distribution mailbox's member list will remain a member unless you explicitly remove it (or delete the mailbox).

If you do not want messages to be sent to any guest room mailboxes in the list that are currently unoccupied, you can configure the COS for the distribution mailbox to block sending messages to member mailboxes that are checked out.  The setting to enable is the Block delivery to checked out rooms setting, which is listed in the Message Settings section on the Recording property page.

Send Messages to the List

Once you have created the distribution mailbox and edited its member list, you can send a message to all the guests in the list simply by leaving a message in that mailbox.  The VMS will automatically forward a copy of the message to all occupied member rooms.  As noted above, whether the message is also sent to all unoccupied member rooms depends on how the COS assigned to the distribution mailbox is configured.