Unified Communications for the Leisure Industry

The leisure industry delivers escapism, excitement, and relaxation for millions every day, whether at a luxury spa or a community leisure centre. In this fiercely competitive landscape, prioritising customer experience and operational efficiency is essential for success.

Robust and reliable communication is the best way to maintain standards and keep guests and customers returning. Yet despite this, many businesses are still stuck with outdated legacy technology that could hold them back.

Familiarity and concerns surrounding upgrade costs are some of the biggest barriers.

However, the reality is, that high-speed WiFi networks and cloud computing have opened the door to new and innovative technologies leisure businesses can harness to increase productivity, enhance communications and boost customer satisfaction.

Unified communications (UC) is one example of this. A cloud-based solution, unified communications bring together the communications tools businesses in the 21st century need to remain connected at all times, in a single all-encompassing application that’s easy to use. These tools include options for voice calls, text, Email, instant messaging, video conferencing, collaborative tools, file transfers and more.

But how can those particularly in the leisure industry take advantage of unified communications? 

At Elite Group, we’re experts in business communications and have been helping businesses across various industries leverage new and emerging technologies for years.

To discover how Unified Communications can enhance your business, keep reading or speak with our experts today.

Ways the Leisure Industry Can Benefit from Unified Communications

Consistent Communications Across Locations

Businesses within the leisure industry, such as holiday parks, theme parks, sports venues, and casinos, frequently have multiple locations and offices around the country. 

However, many of these locations may fail to operate under a single, consistent communications protocol. Instead, separate locations end up adopting individual modes of communication.

While this approach may work in isolation, it fails to provide consistent communication across multiple locations. This can be a serious disadvantage for businesses where regular interactions across multiple locations or offices are essential.

Without a single, pre-determined communication method, employees may choose to utilise methods like WhatsApp, Messenger or personal emails, which can cause confusion and lead to missed messages.

Thankfully, unified communications offer a solution. 

By enabling all essential communication methods to be housed within a single application, all employees can have a consistent and real-time view of the information and documents needed to perform their roles effectively. 

Cost Cutting

According to data from Deloitte, the leisure industry in the UK suffered two consecutive quarters of decline leading up to Q2 2024, and was temporarily halted entirely by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Given these losses, it makes sense for companies in the leisure industry to cut costs wherever possible.

One area where many leisure businesses could make dramatic savings is with their communications spending. Whether it be across offices or site locations, leisure businesses often utilise various communication tools to remain in contact, including email, video chat, instant messaging and more.

According to Elite Group research, 7% of large businesses still regularly use 6 or more separate communications platforms in their day-to-day, many of which will incur subscription costs each month.

With multiple unnecessary subscriptions leaving bank accounts each month, it is clear that some businesses are nowhere near as cost-effective as they could be. By consolidating all communications tools into a single platform, from a single provider, with just a single monthly subscription, leisure sector businesses can significantly reduce communications spending.

Improved Security

Across many areas of the leisure industry, customers are required to share sensitive financial information, such as bank account details, personal ID details and credit or debit card information. Leaving businesses charged with the responsibility of handling this data safely. 

With the constant threat of cyberattacks and scams, businesses need to arm themselves with strict and robust cybersecurity tools and protocols to keep customer data out of the hands of criminals.

However, this is becoming increasingly challenging, as cybercriminals exploit gaps in cybersecurity and deceive employees into willingly sharing sensitive information—commonly known as phishing.

Phishing is becoming one of the key ways criminals access sensitive data. It involves a criminal contacting an employee and pretending to be a fellow colleague or someone of influence within a company. They’ll then demand login details to access sensitive information or encourage the employee to click a malicious link, which could contain viruses and malware. 

One of the reasons company employees fall for such a trick is because they’re overwhelmed with the volume of contact methods in use and fail to double-check the legitimacy of a request before offering up such data.

Unified communications solutions can help combat this.

Because all methods of communication are housed within a single, easy-to-operate platform, the chances of an employee spotting a phishing attempt are greatly increased. On top of this, it is easy to check whether a message has been sent by someone within the same UC platform. 

Along with the above advantage, unified communications solutions also feature their own impressive cybersecurity tools. All data shared within a UC system is fully encrypted, meaning even if the network was breached, any information would be rendered completely useless and unreadable, to anyone without the correct access key.

Plus, multi-factor authentication tools ensure only authorised users can ever access the unified communications system by confirming exactly who they are on a separate device first, further strengthening the defence of sensitive customer and company data.

By opting for a single, reliable communications system to share all sensitive data, leisure businesses are drastically reducing the risk of both accidental leaks and successful cyberattacks. 

More Reliable Internal and External Communications 

In the digital age where technology is expanding rapidly, traditional phone lines are no longer suitable to sustain all communications for leisure businesses.

In fact, switching to a digital or cloud-based alternative is less of a welcome upgrade and more of a necessity at this point, if leisure businesses want to remain fully connected to their customers and each other internally.

The upcoming PSTN switch-off will see traditional analogue phone lines in the UK deactivated, meaning both civilians and businesses need to move to digital communications if their phone systems still run on these lines.

Many businesses whose communications systems are reliant on legacy technology still need to make the switch before the lines go down. This is why British Telecom has delayed the PSTN switch-off from 2025 to 2027.

By moving to unified communications, leisure businesses can avoid losing communications – internally and externally – and can enjoy more reliable and sustainable connections.

Should a leisure business opt for unified communications to avoid the pitfalls of the PSTN switch-off, it’ll also benefit from other great advantages by replacing analogue lines with VOIP technology.

VOIP stands for ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol.’ In layman’s terms, it converts analogue signals received by phones into digital ones, so they can be easily transferred, saved or manipulated. This works well for saving important calls to the cloud, so they can be referred back to later.

HD calling is another great advantage of VOIP. Offering far clearer voices than analogue lines, leisure staff can converse more clearly with customers, and serve them more effectively.

Choose Elite Group to Onboard a Unified Communications Platform Within Your Leisure Business

If unified communications sounds like a step in the right direction for your leisure enterprise, Elite Group is here to support you.

With many years of experience helping businesses just like yours onboard the latest in business technology and communication innovations, we’re your go-to solution for all things cloud communications.

At Elite Group, you’ll be assigned a dedicated account manager who will oversee the onboarding of your new technology and act as your direct link to Elite, as well as monitor your technology once it’s in place to ensure you’re maximising its full benefits.

Plus, with our dedicated service desk, you’ll never be caught off guard when you need support. Our agents and engineers are always on hand to resolve your queries quickly and efficiently.

To find out more about our unified communications for the leisure sector and hospitality industry, speak with an Elite Group expert today.