Hotels/motels represented a large customer set for the Bell System and the histories speak of certain special products/services developed just for them. Would anyone be accurately familiar with them and talk more about them?
In the 1960s Bell had a cordless PBX that had a tiny mechanical message counter and reset over each extension. This allowed rooms to dial out local calls and be billed for them. Back in the 1960s hotels billed local calls about 50c a pop when pay phones were a dime. There were also station sets with a red lamp to indicate message waiting; and I think these are still in use.
Another feature was single digit dialing for various services--room service, valet, concierge, front desk, each would have a single digit assigned to them and the phone dial would have an outer mount explaining all this.
For long distance calls, hotel operators would ask for time and charges (as most businesses did back them), record them, and add them to the guest's bill. Some large hotels had a Teletype to receive this information in writing in bursts.
Larger hotels had a vertical plate/card filing system for the operators' to know a guest's room. They also had a funny alarm clock with levers all around the dial so as to be able to set multiple wake- up calls.
Would anyone else remember special features for hotel/motel services added to a PBX?
For whatever reason, motels along the Jersey Shore tended to have the newer 608 cord boards, while other motels/hotels had more traditional
605 or 551/555 cord boards. Bigger hotels had a separate telephone room and dedicated operators while smaller ones had a PBX adjacent to the front desk. Obviously the front desk clerk had to know how to work a cord PBX.I was at a Miami hotel where the operators had a PA system which was often used to page guests. At the pool, there were outdoor phone sets (in the steel box enclosure) liberally mounted throughout the pool area to allow guests to answer pages.
I was at a Pocono resort where there were both dial and manual pay phones (the only time I ever used a true manual CO served phone). Presumably most calls from this resort would be toll so they eliminated the need to dial zero and went straight to the CO operator. That toll center must have been disproportionately large due to the many resorts in the area generating toll business. It wasn't TSP in 1971. As typical in those days, the resort had pay phones liberally sprinkled the complex (as did all other hotels and motels).
[Indeed, I wonder what the number of pay phones were at their peak, before cellular cut into the business? Every commercial and govt building had several in their lobby, perhaps some on each floor, and some on the street nearby. ]