AC

When Sharon Kirkwood walks into a hotel room, often the first thing she does is listen. It's not a raucous party down the hall that she's tuning into. "It's the mechanical type sounds that drive me crazy — the rackety sound the heat/air conditioning (unit) makes, the buzzing of certain types of light fixtures," says Kirkwood of Farmington Hills, Mich., who works in consumer sales. When it's just too noisy, Kirkwood says, she'll summon hotel staff and pose the question: "Could you sleep in this room?" For corporate trekkers who need a good night's rest to propel them through on-the-road meetings and presentations, noisy hotel rooms can be the bane of their business trips. Noise was the top hotel complaint cited by respondents in a 2011 J.D. Power and Associates North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study. It beat out smelly rooms, sluggish Web connections and rude staff. "It can certainly hurt satisfaction, there's no doubt," says Stuart Greif, J.D. Power's vice president...