Where to Stay in New Orleans: French Quarter & Beyond

By A. Kobtsev Updated August 8, 2026

9 min read

French Quarter, Marigny, the Warehouse District or Uptown - New Orleans neighborhoods compared for noise, price, the stacked hotel taxes and transit.

Wrought-iron balconies along Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans — Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons ( source )

New Orleans breaks into five bookable neighborhoods, and they’re not interchangeable. Book inside the French Quarter if you want to walk to everything and don’t mind noise outside your window until 3 a.m. Book in Faubourg Marigny or Bywater for the same walk to dinner, minus the noise. Book the Warehouse District if you’re here for a convention or a business trip and want a modern room. Book Uptown or the Garden District if you’d rather see the streetcar-and-oak-tree version of the city, and don’t mind a ride back after 10 p.m. Book Mid-City if you want the lowest rates and a streetcar line instead of a taxi habit. None of these is the “wrong” choice - they’re different trips wearing the same zip code.

The tax on that room is its own small maze. New Orleans stacks a state room tax, a separate Exhibition Hall Authority tax and city and state sales tax layers on top of the nightly rate. The combined rate lands around 16-17%, and how it splits depends on the size of the property - more on that below.

The areas at a glance

Area	Best for	Trade-off
French Quarter	Walk to everything, Bourbon Street energy	Loud at night, priciest rooms
Faubourg Marigny / Bywater	Frenchmen Street music, a quieter night’s sleep	10-15 min walk to the Quarter’s center
Warehouse District / CBD	Convention Center, WWII Museum, modern hotels	Quieter after office hours, less “old New Orleans” charm
Garden District / Uptown	Historic mansions, the St. Charles streetcar, Magazine Street	20-30 min from the Quarter by streetcar
Mid-City	Budget rooms, City Park, local rather than tourist	Needs a bus or bike for most sights

The French Quarter: the classic choice, and its cost

Staying inside the Quarter means Jackson Square, the cathedral, the antique shops on Royal Street and the po-boy counters are all a walk rather than a ride. It’s also the loudest base by a wide margin. Bourbon Street runs late every night of the year, and the closer your hotel sits to it, the less that “walk to everything” convenience feels like a win at 2 a.m. Ask specifically about a courtyard-facing room, or a block on the quieter Quarter streets - Royal, Chartres, Dauphine, away from Bourbon - if noise matters to you. Expect to pay the top rate in the city for it either way.

Colorful shotgun houses in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans — Faubourg Marigny: a short walk from the Quarter, and the houses stay quiet after midnight. Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Faubourg Marigny and Bywater: the quieter walk

Just downriver of the Quarter, Faubourg Marigny holds Frenchmen Street, the run of music clubs that locals actually go to rather than the Bourbon Street bars built for tourists. It empties into Bywater, a residential neighborhood of painted shotgun houses and a slower pace again. Both put you 10 to 15 minutes on foot from the edge of the Quarter - close enough for a dinner reservation, far enough that your block goes quiet once the music stops. Rooms here run in guesthouses and small boutique hotels more than big chains, which suits a trip built around music and food rather than convention traffic.

Painted shotgun houses on a residential street in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans — Bywater, past Marigny: residential, painted shotgun houses, and a genuine break from the tourist core. Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Warehouse District and the CBD: quiet after 7 p.m.

If you’re here for the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, a conference or the National WWII Museum, the Warehouse District and the surrounding Central Business District put you inside a short walk of all three, in restored cotton warehouses turned into hotels and modern towers built for business travel. This is the part of the city that looks least like the postcards: taller buildings, wider streets, quieter after 7 p.m. For a lot of trips, that’s exactly the point - reliable chain hotels, easy parking, and the Quarter still only a 10-15 minute walk or a short streetcar ride away.

Historic brick warehouse buildings converted to hotels in the Warehouse District of New Orleans — The Warehouse District's old cotton warehouses, now hotels and galleries - a business-trip base with the Quarter still walkable. Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Central Business District skyline of New Orleans — The CBD skyline - the modern side of a city that's mostly known for its oldest quarter. Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Garden District and Uptown: oak trees and a long ride back

Ride the St. Charles Avenue streetcar far enough upriver and the balconies give way to freestanding mansions under live oak canopies: the Garden District, built on cotton and sugar money, and Uptown beyond it, home to Tulane and Loyola and the shopping strip of Magazine Street. Green and quiet, and a good fit for a longer stay or a family trip. The cost is the Quarter’s walkability - a streetcar ride here runs $1.25 a trip and takes 20 to 30 minutes each way, with service that thins out late at night.

Shops and storefronts along Magazine Street in Uptown New Orleans — Magazine Street, Uptown - six miles of locally owned shops, from antique dealers to art galleries, along the old streetcar line. Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Mid-City: cheapest, and the furthest out

Mid-City, inland from both the Quarter and Uptown, is the most local of the five. City Park anchors it: the art museum, a sculpture garden, and enough open ground that it doesn’t feel like part of the tourist city at all. Bayou St. John runs along its edge for anyone who’d rather jog or paddle than sightsee. The Canal Streetcar line connects it to downtown, but most of what makes Mid-City worth a stay is a short bus or bike ride rather than a walk - neighborhood restaurants that don’t bother with a menu translated for tourists, and rooms that run cheaper than anywhere else on this list. The trade is distance. The French Quarter, Marigny and the Warehouse District all become a ride rather than a stroll.

About 16% in hotel tax, on top of whatever the room costs

New Orleans pulled in 19.46 million visitors in 2025, within about 1% of the city’s all-time 2019 record, and visitor spending hit $10.8 billion. Hotel occupancy in the French Quarter and CBD’s 26,000 rooms, though, eased to a little over 61%, down from 64% the year before. That’s a core-neighborhood figure, not a citywide one - Hotel Saint Vincent, on Magazine Street, ran 70% the same year - but in the Quarter and CBD specifically, asking for a better rate is worth trying more often than in a fully sold-out market.

The tax on top of the room rate is where New Orleans gets complicated, and it depends partly on the size of the place you book. At hotels with 10 or more rooms, a 4% Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District Room Occupancy Tax applies across Orleans Parish, and a separate 3% Ernest N. Morial Exhibition Hall Authority tax stacks on top of that, before state and city sales tax layers are added in turn. Smaller guesthouses and B&Bs - common in Marigny and Bywater - skip those two levies and pay 5% state sales tax where a larger hotel pays 3% - net, about five points less tax on the room. The number commonly cited for a New Orleans hotel bill is about 16%, but that figure traces to a 2019 report and predates a 2025 state sales-tax increase - 16-17% is closer to current for a larger hotel. Pull up rates for your dates and check the actual tax shown at checkout before you commit.

Getting around

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) sits about 15 miles from the Quarter. Both airport bus options leave from the same spot - Level 1 Baggage Claim outside Door 2 - so you’re not hunting for two different curbs. RTA’s Airport Express (Route 202) runs $1.25 to Union Passenger Terminal and the edge of downtown. Jefferson Transit’s (JET) Veterans-Airport (E1) runs $1.50 if your stop is still in Jefferson Parish or $2.00 into New Orleans proper, ending at City Park Avenue. Both are cheaper than a cab. Neither is fast, so budget accordingly if you’re landing tired. One pass bridges both systems: a $6 Regional Ride day pass works on RTA and JET alike, which regular JET fares don’t.

Inside the city, the RTA runs streetcars and buses on a $1.25 single fare, with day passes from $3 and a weekly pass at $15 that pays for itself after about a dozen rides. The St. Charles line is the one worth riding for its own sake, under live oaks the whole way from the CBD to Uptown. It, along with the buses, covers this guide’s five neighborhoods well enough that a car is optional for most trips that don’t include the swamps or plantations outside the city.

When the calendar decides for you

New Orleans runs three separate high-demand windows that don’t behave like a normal beach city’s summer peak. Mardi Gras (the next one falls Tuesday, 9 February 2027) fills the city and the French Quarter specifically, months ahead. Jazz Fest, held over two weekends in late April and early May, does the same on a smaller scale. Hurricane season runs 1 June through 30 November, which isn’t a reason to skip the city - book a flexible rate, buy travel insurance if your trip lands in the peak months, and take the lower prices that come with the quieter weeks.

None of that changes the neighborhood math above. Book the Quarter for the walk, and accept the noise that comes with it. Book Marigny or Bywater for the same walk, minus the noise. Book the Warehouse District if the trip is business, not romance. Book Uptown or the Garden District if you’d rather have oak trees than a 2 a.m. crowd outside your window, and don’t mind the streetcar ride back. Book Mid-City if the budget matters more than the address. That decision was true before any of the tax math above - the tax just tells you what it costs to make it.

Good to know

New Orleans welcomed 19.46 million visitors in 2025, close to the city's 2019 record. Hotel occupancy in the French Quarter and CBD eased to a little over 61% (from 64% in 2024, per STR data) - more room availability in that core than the visitor numbers alone would suggest, though it is a Quarter/CBD figure, not a citywide one. Room-tax layers are cited below with a range rather than one number; several separate taxes stack on a New Orleans hotel bill, some tied to a hotel's room count, and the exact total depends on the property, so check the folio.

Details checked: August 8, 2026