Hotels Making Noise About Eradicating Noise

When AmericInn executives decided to get word out that their hotels offered a substantially quieter environment than that found in many other hotels, they realized they were going to have to make a bit of noise about it.

“We knew we had a room environment that was significantly quieter and that it was important to guests,” said CEO Arnold Angeloni. “The bad news is that, relative to other brands, we barely got any credit for our quiet room environment, even though ‘A Quiet Night’s Rest Assured’ was our tagline. People thought it was a quaint saying but didn’t know it was tied into our room environment.”

So, about four years ago, the AmericInn hired an agency “and we said, ‘you have to change this.’ “

The agency decided the basic masonry construction that had been the basis for the creation of the 218 properties since AmericInn’s founding in the 1980s needed an identity and a higher profile to get noticed. Suddenly, with a name of its own, SoundGuard Construction became a near-perfect tool to reach out in a meaningful way to a travel market craving quiet. Then, last year, to add momentum to the campaign, the corporate web site invited, and then featured, “Noisy Neighbor” stories submitted by guests, describing their experiences at other hotels.

Keeping the TV volume down, muting the toilet flushers, silencing the upstairs Jacuzzis and putting a cork in the boisterous hallway revelry has consistently been a top priority for travelers, with hotels offering guests options from white-noise emitting machines to mask sound to complimentary earplugs or audio CDs featuring serene music. Others, like AmericInn, seek to muffle noise with effective wall and floor construction.

And yet guests continue to sound off about room racket, according to Sam Thanawalla, director of hospitality and travel for J.D. Power and Associates, whose annual North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Survey regularly cites noise as guests’ top complaint.

Their 2008 survey drew responses from 53,400 guests between June 2007 and June 2008 “and noise remains unabated as a problem,” he said, in every sector of the industry except economy budget hotels, where room maintenance, cleanliness and smell outrank room noise.

In this last survey, however, the economy had a stronger sway on responses than ever before, he said. “Lack of maintenance is one of the issues, and this contributes to the lack of attention a lot of the hotels are putting into their core products, putting a stop on any improvements hotels had scheduled at this time of the year. That might include improvements to the air conditioning, elevator shafts or even bathroom flushers, any of that. Because maintenance is being put off, it can contribute to the noise factor.”

A shift toward more business travelers and fewer leisure travelers has also kept noise aversion high. “Business travelers are less tolerant of things like noise, they may have a presentation the next day and want to sleep well and be fresh,” said Thanawalla. “But a lot of corporations are crunching back on what kinds of hotels they use, shifting downmarket.”

In Manhattan, the Tribeca Grand Hotel installed a sound-masking system when the hotel itself was built eight years ago. Public relations director Lori De Blois described it as “much like a white-noise machine that guests can control” and it proved to be a particular asset, given that guest floors surround an eight-story atrium – one looking into the hotel’s lounge. “That forethought spared us any complaints,” according to De Blois.

Not all hotels can do things from the ground up, however. Kimpton, the San Francisco-based boutique chain, has been busy retrofitting hotels with soundproofing during refurbishments, according to Stacey Ellis, director of public relations.

“In situations where we are building or refurbishing a hotel, we will double up on things like sheeting materials in walls, we look at gaps between the doors and our flooring and install seals, we install double paned windows where possible, we rigorously evaluate our heating and cooling systems to make sure they pass our standards, and many more things,” Ellis wrote in a recent e-mail.

“From an operational point of view, we’ve offered earplugs at hotels where there is other construction going on nearby that’s out of our control, and would accommodate nearly any request as possible for other noise reduction solutions.”

AmericInn, meanwhile, has also been adding sound-blocking thresholds beneath doors to keep hallway sounds from leaking into rooms, said Angeloni.

Traveling recently himself, Thanawalla became the beneficiary of a soothing music CD with breathing and relaxation exercises as well as some earplugs, presented upon check-in at a hotel for a room next to an elevator shaft.

The elevator, fortunately, did not run at night, he said. And he found no need to use the CD or earplugs to induce sleep. “I was too tired,” he said.

Noise turned out to be the least of his complaints. “But,” he said, “I had plenty of others.”

Caryn Eve Murray
Associate Editor
Hotel Interactive, Inc.

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