Royal Sonesta New Orleans

We had a wonderful stay there! You need to understand this is a coastal area, this building has been there since 1969 and survived several storms. With that said understand everything is not perfect but for the money and location it was awesome!! They have the BEST door guy named Calab he made us smile or laugh every time! All employees were professional and made us feel like a valued customer.

We love the Royal Sonesta on Bourbon Street. It is our home away from home when we visit New Orleans. We have stayed at some other hotels in the French Quarter and this is definitively our favorite. The location is terrific and in the heart of the French Quarter. The decor has a very old-world elegant charm. The pool with a bar and waiter service is great. And the people are also great. We loved talking to Malcolm and Caleb throughout each day as we came and went from the hotel. Desire, one of the restaurants there, has great food, our rooms are always clean and spacious. Water temperature sometimes varies a bit, but that is a minor item. I almost can't imagine staying at another hotel in the French Quarter.

Overall, we enjoyed our stay at this hotel. Strengths: - probably the best location of any hotel in the French Quarter, as it is within walking distance of so many NOLA highlights and is right on Bourbon St - very kind staff, especially Caleb (doorman) who greeted us so kindly every morning he was working and went above and beyond - pool with poolside bar, courtyard, plenty of places to lounge - 2 restaurants and a coffee shop in-house - housekeeping did a FANTASTIC job at keeping our room clean daily, it was much appreciated coming back to a clean room after long days of exploring Growth: - although pool was great, there is a DJ on Sundays who BLASTED music (would be good at a rave, but Sunday 2pm at pool, no). It was unbearable and the other guests at the pool were not pleased as well. The pool is meant to be a nice respite from the liveliness of Bourbon St, it was easily twice as loud - paid for a deluxe suite Queen, think I would’ve foregone the extra cost and just gone with a regular room - our room had no view (view of a wall), there were stains on the floor, TV didn’t work The hotel has done everything they can to mitigate this but be aware that rooms on the Bourbon St side are quite noisy at all hours of the night as there are several bars both in and adjacent to the hotel.

Every year I go down to New Orleans with my partner in August and we spend a bit under a week in the city. This year we cut it down to 3 days/2 nights, so we wanted to get a place in the middle of it all to save time and get in everything we wanted to do, but that's where this property truly disappointed. The first night,we checked in and everything seemed fine, only disappointment was the fact that the pool closed at like 7pm, just before we checked in, so we didn't get to swim the night we checked in like we wanted to. The big issue came the second day, when after we got back to our room after swimming, we couldn't get into the room because the lock had died. So we're freezing in the 60° hallways in our wet swimsuits and we go down to the lobby to ask for help, which the receptionist tells us they'll send someone up... what they neglected to tell us was that it would take them well over a half an hour to get up to our room. The security was very friendly and let us in our room and told us maintenance would be up shortly to fix the door. Mind the part where I said our trip was short and we crammed in a lot of stuff, so our riverboat cruise was leaving soon, so we waited about 10 minutes for maintenance after rinsing off and changing, so probably a good 15-20 minutes total, before realizing they probably weren't coming and ran off to catch the boat. Fast forward 2.5 hrs later, the door still doesn't work. So we go downstairs and they offer to switch our room, which we agreed to since it was the same type of room. They sent us up with one of the employees who pushes that luggage cart around, which we didn't need because we only had 2 bags, but I'm glad he came up, because they made us wait another half hour for someone to come up again! It was so bad after about 20 minutes the employee we were with went into another room to call the front desk and make sure that someone was actually coming! Once security did come up again things went fairly smooth as we switched rooms, but the time was gone. We stayed 2 nights, and totaled up about 40ish hours total with access to the property and over an hour of it was spent waiting in the halls to access our room and our stuff. We could've gone to the business district and back with that kind of time... That really ruined it for me. And the room we were moved to was super gross. The mirror looked like it had burn marks, the curtain was broken, and it had one chair while the room we were in had 2 chairs, which is nice when you're 2 people in a small room with a king bed, having a spot for both people to sit. And the room must've had something in it because we were fine the first night, but after the second night we were both sick. As for everything else on the property, its pretty good. The pool, although it closes too early, was nice, they've got a bar right next to the pool open from 11a to 7p. The room had a nice view of the side street with a small balcony that was just big enough to sit outside on. The Jazz Playhouse was really nice, they had good drinks and desserts and the artist playing on Tuesday nights was phenomenal. And the best part is just walking out the front door and being right on Bourbon street! Another bonus is you get tour discount codes for staying with them, its like 10-25% off depending on the tour, but that's nice. And the sugar cookie at check in was cool too. And if you're worried about noise, yes there's a lot of loud noise, but frankly I can't be upset about it because what do you expect being right on Bourbon street? It goes from about 4pm until 2-4am. If that's a problem, you shouldn't stay here. I probably won't stay here again, just because I like to be able to get into my room myself and I don't want to risk getting sick from one of their poorly cleaned rooms. But if you want to stay in the middle of everything on Bourbon and you're willing to take that gamble on whether or not things work out for you, this place isn't half bad if you only get the good parts. If it wasn't for the wasted time and the inconveniences, I would've rated it a 4.5/5