A communications system for providing hotline and preemption features in real-time communication sessions includes a presence server for collecting presence and preference information for a presentity and a communications manager for handling requests for communication sessions with the presentity. The presence information includes availability of devices of the presentity, and the preference information includes a priority level granted to one or more watchers of the presentity. Upon receipt of a request from a watcher for a new communication session in a select media type, and in response to unavailability of the presentity due to a concurrent communication session in that media type, the communications manager determines the priority levels of the watchers for the new and concurrent communication sessions and preempts the concurrent communication session when the priority level of the watcher for the new communication session is greater than that of the watcher for the concurrent communication session.