A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ACOUSTICAL DESIGN IN HOTELS

Abstract

This research study is about the acoustical design in hotels. It examines the various acoustical requirements for a hotel design and investigates certain factors that the Architects and Consultants should consider during the planning and design stages of a hotel project. Poor communication and team work between the project team and consultants would cause problems and severe ramifications which may then result in higher costs. This dissertation studies how the design and zoning of rooms in a building affects the acoustical performance of the building. Therefore, through this study, field measurements are conducted in two selected hotels in Singapore to assess their acoustical design. As the two hotels are located in different areas of Singapore and are exposed to different external environment, their acoustical requirements would be relatively different. The field measurements of background noise, sound pressure level distribution, reverberation time and noise reduction were conducted based on the ASTM standard E 336-97 and E 413-04. Background noise measurements were performed within the hotel, mainly the guestrooms, meeting rooms and the swimming pool. Reverberation time experiments were carried out only in meeting rooms to evaluate if they meet the criteria as rooms intended for speech. Lastly, the sound pressure level distribution and noise reduction measurements were done to assess the sound reduction rating of the walls adjoining the guestrooms and meeting rooms.