When you think of movable walls, it might bring to mind university lecture theatres, school auditoriums, or classrooms. It might not be the first thing you think about when you’re confronted with hotel noise problems.

Conferences and meetings

But, for most hotels, accommodation is only one of several revenue sources for the venue. Most hotels host conferences and meetings. Our client was no different. The hotel had designed flexible meeting rooms to host a range of meetings, from intimate gatherings to fully-fledged conferences.

This flexibility was achieved by separating larger spaces using movable walls, also know as acoustic operable walls, folding door dividers, accordion walls, or operable partitions. This is not an uncommon scenario for event spaces, where a hotel is used for events of various sizes.

The downside of movable walls

Unfortunately, the flexibility of having movable walls dissecting the space often comes at the cost of sound transference. In this case, as with many movable walls, speech transmission was the major problem. Guests meeting in one room were distracted by those in the next door space.

This meant that the hotel could not book all three rooms concurrently, losing revenue. Finding a solution wasn’t as simple as improving the seals.

A discrete solution

As you can see from the picture, the high quality fit out needed careful treatment. Often where the ceiling is plasterboard, we would use our cut in transducers. However, adding more elements into the ceiling was not something the client wanted to do.

Instead, Soundmask installed a hidden Soundmask system to maintain the aesthetic of the space. An in ceiling system was installed using existing ceiling access. Now the client can use all three spaces at once.