At least they play music. I once stayed in a Howard Johnsons Motor Lodge in Pittsburgh near CMU, where, at corridor intersections, they had speakers to generate some ambient noise to mask voices from the rooms. Most places that do this use white noise, or water sounds. But this was Pittsburgh. They were playing faint machinery noises - whirr, chunk, etc. At first I thought someone had left a PA microphone open in the boiler room or something, but no, it was deliberate.