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This paper presents the preference of water soundscape through listening evaluation. As meditation, listening to water sound is a tool that often use to provide positive emotion and psychological restoration. Twenty water soundscape samples were chosen based on natural and man-made sounds, as well as the sound in relation to the architecture and materiality. A semantic differential questionnaire was created with nine pairs of contractual sound qualities. Sixty-six architectural students with normal hearing condition were participated in this listening evaluation. The result has shown that 92% of the participants have positive impression to a soft quiet mid frequency sound (gentle stream) due to the listening impression of relax (88%) and comfort (89%) qualities. On the contrary, 77% of the participants have a negative impression for a loud intense broadband sound (rain on glass roof) due to the listening impression of noisy (82%) and agitating (80%) qualities. Sixty-two percent of the participants prefer rain on water sound due to the listening impression of comfort (60%) more than rain on different materials such as woods, metal, glass, tent, and pavement. Shishiodoshi and Suikinkutsu were also identified with “quiet” sound quality but overall likely impression is not as high as water fountain.

The hotel lobby is where a guest forms his or her first impression of a hotel's brand image and quality; hence, integrating appropriate design criteria into hotel lobby design is a value creation act. The novelty and aim of this study is to identified and categorized 15 hotel lobby design factors and ranked their importance and satisfaction levels from hotel operators' perspective to achieve value innovation and sustainable operations management. For this purpose, it systematically developed a questionnaire based on the Kano method and conducted a questionnaire survey on 30 hotel operators in China. Yang's importance-satisfaction model was applied in data analysis. The study found that economic advantage and value creation are must-be and one-dimensional aspects, and considerations such as modular design, appropriate construction management and cost control, ease of maintenance and repair, and atmospheric design methods are important economic advantage criteria. Strategies involving these considerations facilitate value innovation and sustainable operations and guarantee a comfortable and environmentally friendly stay to hotel guests. The findings not only clarify hotel operators' insights regarding the use of attractive factors in hotel lobby design but also serve as a reference for international hotel operators to develop possible business models with lobby design strategies.

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