It’s a top guest complaint but many hotels can’t fix it

On a work trip to Mississippi last year, Jason GaNun wound up trying three different hotel rooms to get some peace and quiet before a busy day — and none of them did the trick.

In the first one, he said the “ancient” air conditioning unit was one of the loudest he’d ever encountered. When he moved to the second room, it was the refrigerator noise that got in the way of sleeping. And next to the third room he tried, other hotel guests were throwing a party.

“I could hear everything they were doing,” said GaNun, a project manager for a demolition company in Pennsylvania who travels every other week for work.

For Lindsey Maness, the menace during one hotel stay for work in Austin, Texas, was a noisy elevator near her room. Seven months pregnant at the time, Maness could hear the “dinging” of the elevators opening and closing all night. That wasn’t the only issue.

“The walls were paper thin, and I could hear people in the room adjacent … chatting until very late in the night,” said Maness, who now works for the National Sleep Foundation. Far and away, it was “the worst night of sleep” she’s had at a hotel.

Anyone who stays in hotels regularly has probably faced the same issue: Noise.

External noise, internal noise, it doesn’t matter. After cleanliness, it’s the top concern of hotel guests, according to ProStay, a software and consulting firm that serves hotels.

And with an increased emphasis on quality sleep for health and wellness, hotel guests are more adamant than ever that a good night’s sleep is a key part of what they’re booking. Yet tackling noise issues is challenging in part because the sources vary — think traffic on a busy street in Manhattan versus yelling in a neighboring room. Plus, sound mitigation sometimes entails costly build-outs or renovations.

Here’s what’s at play — and what guests can do to protect their slumber.

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While having a place to sleep has always been the primary solution guests are seeking from hotels, creating a calm, quiet environment hasn’t always been the predominant preoccupation of hoteliers, says Chekitan S. Dev, a professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration and a hospitality marketing and branding expert.

“It wasn’t made a priority in a significant way by hotels until the late 90s,” Dev told CNN Travel.

One manifestation of that shift is a Holiday Inn Express ad campaign that ran for more than a decade beginning in 1998 and showed ordinary people completing complex tasks such as brain surgery that were far outside their professional expertise. When asked if they were up to the job, they would explain it away by saying, “But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express hotel last night.”

But in many cases, hotels have invested more time and money in recent years in creating attractive lobbies, fine dining restaurants and exercise facilities.

Yet as hotel prices climb, so do guests’ expectations, and in the end, guests need to sleep.

“If you are charging me $400 a night for a hotel, I expect the room to be quiet,” Dev said.

Simon Chapman, general manager of The Benjamin in New York City, says today’s travelers are much more attentive to “the quality of their sleep.”

“They are no longer only asking whether a bed is comfortable; they are thinking about the complete environment — sound, light, room temperature, pillow support and how easily they can disconnect from technology,” he said in an email.

The value of eight hours of sound sleep has become more apparent to guests in an era of meditation apps and wearable fitness trackers that monitor sleep.

“The importance of sleep is becoming more front and center in everyday people’s lives for all of the work they have to do when they are in their regular living environment,” said John Lopos, CEO of the National Sleep Foundation. “And when they go out on the road, why should they sacrifice that?”

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There’s a lot that hotel owners can do to mitigate sound for all guests, particularly when they are building new properties.

Lopos says “if there’s new construction, they should absolutely be thinking about things like sound mitigation … in the design and construction phase, including the selection of materials, what are they doing to manage sound, light and climate?”

There are standards for sound transmission in modern building codes.

According to Glenn Nowak, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, a sound transmission class (STC) score of 50 is “the benchmark.”

Hotels whose rooms are built with that sound score would render a normal conversation taking place in one room “inaudible” in an adjacent room and “loud music would be quite faint.”

“Many hotels around the world were built before such standards were put in place,” Nowak told CNN Travel.

And in newer properties, renovations sometimes inadvertently reduce a hotel’s sound rating.

Whether the property is old or new, the main obstacle is often a financial one. All of these considerations aimed at mitigating sound cost money.

“The tension is the investment required to create a good night’s sleep that is commensurate with the price point for the hotel room,” Dev of Cornell says. “Sometimes hotels don’t invest the amount that’s required.”

And the acoustical properties of materials vary widely. Nowak says when you’re dealing with sound mitigation, a “cast-in-place concrete wall” is often “significantly superior to a metal stud frame wall.”

But for the hotel, that translates into a bigger investment.

“The concrete wall takes longer to build, is less flexible, and has higher labor costs,” he said. “A concrete wall is a lot heavier than a metal stud wall, so this design decision would impact the entire building’s structural system.”

This is also true of building double walls, Nowak said, which are “among the more advanced strategies for … acoustically separating each room from the next,” but add to construction costs.

Beyond the physical construction of a hotel, which may or may not have been built to mitigate sound, travelers also typically contend with reservation systems that don’t really allow them to choose rooms in specific areas that could be quieter.

There are typically no schematics like airlines offer to allow travelers to choose their ideal situation — window or aisle, front or back. Unfortunately, you can’t see which hotel rooms are occupied or where they’re located.

Frequent travelers like GaNun say rooms on higher floors or at the end of hallways are quieter. But even if a guest anticipates the problem and tries to find a solution such as booking a corner room, it’s not easy to do without talking to someone on site.

Dev says it’s his pet peeve, and something he discusses often with hotel general managers and his students.

“You can see every seat available on the plane,” he says, referring to online flight booking. “Why can’t I do the same when I book a hotel?”

GaNun agrees. “Let me pick where I stay,” he said.

Dev says some chains are looking into this shift in reservations but balancing housekeeping needs with a variety of arrival and departure times isn’t simple.

There are also security concerns that keep hotels from displaying occupancy levels during the online reservation process.

Some hotels are marketing their quietest rooms to travelers who are looking for an especially restorative sleep experience. Under the “ sleep tourism ” umbrella, they often come paired with amenities such as a choice of pillows or weighted sleep masks. But it all comes at a premium the average traveler is unlikely to pay for a routine hotel stay.

Guests can, of course, call a hotel directly to ask for a quieter room at the end of a hall or far from the elevator, or put concerns over noise in the notes section of the online reservation system. Those requests can also be made at check-in, although the options narrow when occupancy is high.

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Exterior noise presents its own challenges.

In New Orleans, it could be sudden bursts of sound from passing musicians.

When Silvia Passiflora traveled to New Orleans, music coming from outside of her hotel room woke her up. A musician herself, Passiflora knows New Orleans is a hot spot for live music so it didn’t bother her that much. But the late-night revelry definitely penetrated the walls of her hotel.

“I kept waking up at 2, 3, 4 in the morning to music,” she said.

Sounds coming from the exterior often aren’t consistent, and hence they can be quite jarring for a traveler .

The Benjamin, for example, is located at Lexington Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan, a few blocks from Rockefeller Plaza and other popular tourist attractions.

“No hotel — especially one in the heart of Manhattan — can eliminate every sound,” says Chapman, the general manager, adding, “City activity can be unpredictable.”

Many urban properties like The Benjamin have invested in multi-pane windows, and blackout curtains, which can block both light and sound. In lieu of bigger changes that could reduce noise complaints, many hotels now routinely hand out earplugs and eye masks.

And that’s helpful because some rooms — or areas of the hotel — are louder than others.

Maness, who spent the night clocking the hotel elevator’s comings and goings, said her room was on the first floor where sounds often reverberate. She learned a lot from her lousy night in Texas.

“I now request hotel rooms as far away from the elevator as possible and try to book rooms with no adjacent guests when possible,” Maness said.

Chapman, the GM of The Benjamin, encourages such a request, saying guests can indicate “higher floor, quieter location, or room away from the elevator,” and if availability allows, their requests will be accommodated.

Many large hotel chains also face another issue: they serve a wide swath of people with divergent needs, including business travelers gathering for a conference, couples on a romantic weekend getaway and families looking to entertain children. For this last group, what’s better than a hotel with a pool?

When Marie Cloutier stayed at a budget-friendly hotel in Massachusetts during a conference, the hotel pool was located in a ground-floor atrium at the center of the property where everyone could see — and hear — it. She assumed, incorrectly, that the fun would wind down at night.

“When I called the hotel manager, he said the kids needed their playtime and the rest of us could suck it up!” she said.

Of course, some of the reasons guests struggle to sleep while traveling have nothing to do with the thickness of the walls or noise from the hallway.

Lopos says especially with work travel, “You’re out of your routine, you’re socializing, it’s stressful.”

Hotel guests often have an ill-advised nightcap in the lobby bar. They eat heavily right before bedding down for the night. They stay out later than usual.

All of that affects sleep.

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Consumers are increasingly able to customize other products and services they buy. Could that one day mean an online reservation system that allows travelers to have greater control over the rooms they are assigned at hotels?

“The locus of control is shifting from the operator to the customer,” says Dev of Cornell.

But it may take time for hotels to catch up to guests who increasingly view a solid night’s sleep as the most important amenity a hotel can offer but aren’t prepared to pay an arm and a leg for an exclusive sleep suite.

In the meantime, hotel guests often have to find solutions on their own.

In addition to requests for quieter, less occupied parts of a hotel, you can consult websites, including The Quiet Hotels and another similarly named Quiet Hotels , that give hotels scores based on how quiet they are.

The Quiet Hotels, for example, gives ratings for hotels in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and many other cities. Hotels with scores of 90 or above are deemed “exceptionally quiet.” And the website explains its methodology. The editors evaluate the hotel’s surroundings for busy roads or nightlife and also assess the building’s construction, paying attention to sound transfer, window quality and room positioning.

So for its entry on The Lowell in Manhattan, for example, the site’s authors say the hotel is on a residential block of East 63rd Street with no through traffic, plus there’s a “low room count over fourteen quiet floors.” Meanwhile, an entry for Boston, Hotel Commonwealth, cites the building’s “concrete-and-steel post-2003 construction with high-acoustic glass.” Guests can also book rooms that face an interior courtyard. Note that none of the hotels listed are budget properties, but some are moderately priced.

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Nowak, at UNLV, recommends older properties like The Peery Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was built in 1910 with “massive load-bearing brick walls” and appears on the National Register of Historic Places.

General Manager Todd Wheeler says the “historic craftsmanship” that went into building the hotel helps make the property relaxing.

“Many guests appreciate the sense of quiet that comes from the building’s solid masonry construction,” he said.

Lopos encourages all travelers to embrace pro-sleep activities like getting a lot of natural light during the daytime, exercising and sticking to a consistent meal schedule. Closing the curtains tightly before bed and turning down the thermostat also help.

Lopos also travels with a white noise machine wherever he goes, and hotels are increasingly outfitting rooms with updated alarm clocks that have a variety of sound settings.

Hotel occupancy rates have been quite strong this year, with American properties reporting record levels, according to a report from CoStar and Tourism Economics.

It’s good news for the travel sector, but for those hotel guests plagued by loud elevators and rowdy fellow guests, it may just sound noisy.

So to be on the safe side, pack your earplugs.

去年，杰森·加农 (Jason GaNun) 因公前往密西西比州出差，为了在忙碌的一天开始前获得一些宁静，他尝试了三间不同的酒店房间——但都没有达到目的。

他说，第一间房里那台“老旧”的空调是他听过最吵的之一。换到第二间房后，冰箱的噪音又让他难以入睡。而他试住的第三间房隔壁，其他酒店客人正在开派对。

“我能听到他们做的一切，”宾夕法尼亚州一家拆迁公司的项目经理 GaNun 说，他每隔一周就要出差一次。

对林赛·马内斯来说，在德克萨斯州奥斯汀出差入住酒店期间，最让她烦恼的是房间附近一部噪音很大的电梯。当时她已经怀孕七个月了，整晚都能听到电梯“叮叮当当地”开关的声音。但这还不是唯一的问题。

“墙壁薄如纸，我能听到隔壁房间的人聊天到深夜，”马内斯说道，她现在就职于美国国家睡眠基金会。这绝对是她在酒店睡得最差的一晚。

经常入住酒店的人可能都遇到过同样的问题：噪音。

外部噪音、内部噪音，都无关紧要。据为酒店提供服务的软件和咨询公司ProStay称，除了清洁度之外，噪音是酒店客人最关心的问题。

随着人们越来越重视优质睡眠对健康和幸福的重要性，酒店客人比以往任何时候都更加坚持，良好的睡眠是他们预订酒店的关键因素。然而，解决噪音问题并非易事，部分原因是噪音来源多种多样——例如曼哈顿繁忙街道上的车流声与隔壁房间的喧闹声。此外，隔音措施有时需要耗资不菲的改造或翻新。

以下是其中的原因——以及客人可以采取哪些措施来保护自己的睡眠。

查理·贝内特/本杰明皇家索内斯塔酒店

康奈尔大学诺兰酒店管理学院教授、酒店营销和品牌专家切基坦·S·德夫表示，虽然为客人提供睡觉的地方一直是他们从酒店寻求的主要解决方案，但营造一个平静、安静的环境却并非酒店经营者的主要关注点。

“直到 90 年代末，酒店才真正将这一点重视起来，”德夫告诉 CNN 旅游频道。

这种转变的一个表现是假日快捷酒店（Holiday Inn Express）从1998年开始持续十多年的广告宣传活动。该活动展示了普通人完成诸如脑外科手术等远远超出其专业领域的复杂任务。当被问及他们是否胜任这项工作时，他们会解释说：“但我昨晚确实住在假日快捷酒店。”

但近年来，许多酒店投入了更多的时间和金钱来打造吸引人的大堂、高级餐厅和健身设施。

然而，随着酒店价格上涨，客人的期望也随之提高，但归根结底，客人还是需要睡觉的。

“如果你收我每晚 400 美元的酒店住宿费，我希望房间安静，”德夫说。

纽约市本杰明酒店总经理西蒙·查普曼表示，如今的旅行者更加注重“睡眠质量”。

他在一封电子邮件中写道：“他们不再只问床是否舒适；他们会考虑整个环境——声音、光线、室温、枕头支撑以及他们能否轻松地与科技产品脱离。”

在冥想应用程序和可穿戴式健身追踪器监测睡眠的时代，8 小时充足睡眠的价值对客人来说变得越来越明显。

“睡眠的重要性在人们的日常生活中越来越凸显，因为他们在日常生活中要处理各种工作，”美国国家睡眠基金会首席执行官约翰·洛波斯说。“当他们外出旅行时，为什么要牺牲睡眠呢？”

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酒店业主可以采取很多措施来减轻噪音，让所有客人都能享受到更好的住宿体验，尤其是在建造新酒店时。

洛波斯说：“如果有新的建筑，他们绝对应该考虑隔音等问题……在设计和施工阶段，包括材料的选择，他们正在采取哪些措施来控制声音、光线和气候？”

现代建筑规范中对隔音性能有相关标准。

内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校建筑学副教授格伦·诺瓦克表示，隔音等级 (STC) 50 分是“基准”。

如果酒店房间的音效设计得当，那么在一个房间里进行的正常对话在隔壁房间将“听不见”，而“大声播放的音乐也会变得很微弱”。

“世界各地很多酒店都是在这些标准出台之前建造的，”诺瓦克告诉 CNN 旅游频道。

而在较新的酒店中，装修有时会无意中降低酒店的隔音等级。

无论房产是新是旧，主要障碍往往是资金问题。所有这些旨在降低成本的考量因素。

康奈尔大学的德夫表示：“矛盾之处在于，要让客人睡个好觉，酒店房间的价格必须与之相符，而这需要投入相应的资源。有时，酒店并没有投入所需的资金。”

不同材料的声学性能差异很大。诺瓦克表示，在隔音方面，“现浇混凝土墙”通常“明显优于金属框架墙”。

但对酒店而言，这意味着更大的投资。

他说：“混凝土墙建造时间更长，灵活性更差，人工成本也更高。混凝土墙比金属龙骨墙重得多，因此这项设计决策会影响整栋建筑的结构体系。”

诺瓦克表示，建造双层墙也是如此，双层墙是“将每个房间与相邻房间在声学上分隔开的更先进的策略之一”，但会增加建筑成本。

除了酒店的物理结构（可能为了降低噪音而建造，也可能没有）之外，旅客通常还会遇到预订系统的问题，这些系统实际上并不允许他们选择特定区域的房间，而这些区域可能更安静。

通常情况下，酒店不会像航空公司那样提供房间示意图，让旅​​客选择理想的座位——靠窗还是靠走道，靠前还是靠后。很遗憾，你无法看到哪些酒店房间已被占用，也无法了解它们的具体位置。

像GaNun这样的常旅客表示，楼层较高或位于走廊尽头的房间更安静。但即使客人预料到这个问题并尝试寻找解决方案，例如预订角落的房间，如果不与酒店工作人员沟通，也很难做到。

Dev 说这是他最讨厌的事情，他经常与酒店总经理和学生讨论这个问题。

“你可以看到飞机上所有可用的座位，”他指的是在线预订机票。“为什么我预订酒店时就不能这样做呢？”

加农同意了。“让我自己选住哪儿吧，”他说。

Dev 表示，一些连锁酒店正在研究这种预订方式的转变，但要平衡客房清洁需求与各种不同的入住和退房时间并非易事。

出于安全考虑，酒店也不会在网上预订过程中显示入住率。

一些酒店正将旗下最安静的客房推向市场，吸引那些寻求极致睡眠体验的旅客。这些客房被归类为“睡眠旅游”，通常会配备多种枕头选择或加重眼罩等设施。但所有这些都价格不菲，普通旅客不太可能为普通的酒店住宿支付如此高昂的费用。

当然，客人可以直接致电酒店，要求入住走廊尽头或远离电梯的安静房间，或者在网上预订系统的备注栏中注明对噪音的顾虑。客人也可以在办理入住时提出这些要求，但入住率高时，可选择的房间会比较少。

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外部噪音也带来了自身的挑战。

在新奥尔良，这可能是路过的音乐家突然发出的乐声。

西尔维娅·帕西弗洛拉去新奥尔良旅行时，酒店房间外传来的音乐声把她吵醒了。帕西弗洛拉本身也是一名音乐家，她知道新奥尔良是现场音乐的热门地点，所以并没有太在意。但深夜的狂欢声确实穿透了酒店的墙壁。

“我经常在凌晨两三点、四点被音乐吵醒，”她说。

来自外部的声音往往不稳定，因此对于旅行者来说可能会非常刺耳。

例如，本杰明酒店位于曼哈顿莱克星顿大道和第 50 街的交汇处，距离洛克菲勒中心和其他热门旅游景点仅几个街区。

“没有哪家酒店——尤其是一家位于曼哈顿市中心的酒店——能够消除所有声音，”总经理查普曼说，“城市活动难以预测。”

许多像本杰明酒店这样的城市酒店都投资安装了多层玻璃窗和遮光窗帘，这些设备可以同时阻挡光线和噪音。由于没有采取更彻底的措施来减少噪音投诉，许多酒店现在例行发放耳塞和眼罩。

这很有帮助，因为有些房间（或酒店的一些区域）比其他房间（或酒店的一些区域）更吵闹。

马内斯整晚都在观察酒店电梯的进出情况，她说她的房间在一楼，那里声音经常回荡。她在德克萨斯州的糟糕夜晚让她学到了很多。

“我现在会要求酒店房间尽可能远离电梯，并且尽可能预订没有相邻客人的房间，”马内斯说。

本杰明酒店总经理查普曼鼓励客人提出这样的要求，他说客人可以提出“楼层较高、位置安静或远离电梯的房间”的要求，如果酒店有空房，就会满足客人的要求。

许多大型连锁酒店还面临着另一个问题：它们服务于需求各异的广大客户群体，包括参加会议的商务旅客、享受浪漫周末之旅的情侣以及希望带孩子入住的酒店家庭。对于最后一类客户来说，还有什么比一家带游泳池的酒店更好的选择呢？

玛丽·克卢捷在马萨诸塞州参加会议期间入住了一家经济型酒店。酒店的游泳池位于一楼中庭，就在酒店中心位置，每个人都能看到——也能听到——游泳池的喧闹声。她错误地以为，到了晚上，这种热闹的景象就会逐渐消失。

“我打电话给酒店经理，他说孩子们需要玩耍时间，我们其他人就忍着吧！”她说道。

当然，客人在旅行途中难以入睡的一些原因与墙壁的厚度或走廊的噪音无关。

洛波斯说，尤其是出差旅行，“你会打乱自己的作息，需要社交，这会让人感到压力很大。”

酒店客人经常在大堂酒吧喝睡前酒，而且往往是在临睡前吃得过多。他们也经常比平时晚归。

所有这些都会影响睡眠。

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消费者越来越能够定制他们购买的其他产品和服务。这是否意味着有一天，在线预订系统可以让旅行者更好地控制他们在酒店被分配到的房间？

康奈尔大学的德夫表示：“控制权正在从运营商转移到客户手中。”

但酒店可能需要一段时间才能满足客人的需求，因为客人越来越认为舒适的睡眠是酒店提供的最重要的设施，但他们并不愿意为专属睡眠套房支付高昂的费用。

与此同时，酒店客人往往不得不自行寻找解决办法。

除了要求入住酒店更安静、入住率更低的区域外，您还可以参考一些网站，例如 The Quiet Hotels 和另一个名称类似的 Quiet Hotels，这些网站会根据酒店的安静程度给酒店打分。

例如，“静谧酒店”（The Quiet Hotels）网站会对纽约、亚特兰大、洛杉矶等众多城市的酒店进行评级。得分90分及以上的酒店被认为是“极其安静”。该网站还解释了其评级方法。编辑们会评估酒店周边环境，例如是否有繁忙的道路或夜生活场所，还会评估建筑结构，重点关注隔音效果、窗户质量和房间位置。

例如，该网站在介绍曼哈顿的洛厄尔酒店时，指出该酒店位于东63街的一个住宅街区，没有过境车辆，而且“房间数量少，分布在14层安静的楼层”。同时，波士顿的联邦酒店则介绍说，该建筑“采用2003年后建造的钢筋混凝土结构，并配有高隔音玻璃”。客人还可以预订面向内部庭院的客房。需要注意的是，所列酒店均非经济型酒店，但其中一些价格适中。

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内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校的诺瓦克推荐了一些较老的酒店，例如位于犹他州盐湖城的皮里酒店，该酒店建于 1910 年，拥有“巨大的承重砖墙”，并被列入国家史迹名录。

总经理托德·惠勒表示，酒店建造过程中融入的“历史工艺”有助于营造轻松的氛围。

他说：“许多客人都很喜欢这座建筑坚固的砖石结构所带来的宁静感。”

洛波斯鼓励所有旅行者养成良好的睡眠习惯，例如白天多晒太阳、锻炼身体以及保持规律的饮食。睡前拉上窗帘并调低恒温器温度也有助于睡眠。

洛波斯无论去哪里都会带着一台白噪音机，而且越来越多的酒店也开始在房间里配备具有各种声音设置的新型闹钟。

根据 CoStar 和 Tourism Economics 的一份报告，今年酒店入住率表现强劲，美国酒店的入住率更是创下历史新高。

这对旅游业来说是个好消息，但对于那些饱受电梯噪音和吵闹的住客困扰的酒店客人来说，这可能听起来很吵闹。

为了安全起见，最好带上耳塞。