Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans

From the time we walked through the doors, our stay was amazing!!! Ciara ensured that we had a high floor with a panoramic view of the river! It was so beautiful! The room was breathtaking! Turn-down service really spoiled us every night! We want to go back and never leave!! Beautiful experience all around!!!!

Stayed four nights at this hotel right on the Mississippi in April. The room I stayed in was large with an amazing views. The hotel has two excellent restaurants with relatively broad menus. The food and service were excellent. The hotel also has a nice pool with a large sundeck and a bar. There is also a wonderful bar in the lobby. The staff as always was beyond attentive and everything was as you would expect from a Four Seasons. The location turned out to be perfect for us. The Quarter is a ten minute walk and Tulane a trolley or a quick Uber away. I gave some thought to staying in the Quarter but for a family better to stay outside in my view. This was a 10/10 hotel and one of the best Four Seasons that I have ever stayed and that includes their hotel in Philadelphia which in my view is the best hotel in the world. Final comment please pay a visit to the WWII museum while you are there. There are so many reasons it cannot be missed.

I spent last week at this fantastic property perfectly located on the river on Canal St. This is a fantastic Four Seasons and it has everything you can imagine and located perfectly to all the great restaurants, shopping, and really ideal for business or a getaway. My check in was super efficient and they could not have been nicer. The team gave me a fantastic upgrade on the 18th floor that was superb. Tiffany came to say hello and it was so wonderful to see her again. She even gave me another plush 4S mask for sleeping! Big thank you Tiffany! I had a Negroni after the gym and she made it better than the one I had in Rome the previous weekend!! Grazie mille!! They gym is very well equipped with anything you may need to stay fit in this city of outstanding cuisine. I also got a chance to see Sharah who is always so wonderful to speak and has such an upbeat genuine way of communicating. She does so much to ensure my stay is perfect and I cannot thank you enough for everything! Keep being you because it is at another level!! Had Clients come to the hotel and Noah took care of them and made sure they were able to valet without issue. He really made them feel welcome! The housekeeping team is over the top as far as coming when they say and the room is always left immaculate, in such perfect order. The team at the Spa is so nice and really made taking a steam easy. I checked out with Shane and he was really pleasant and made things look effortless. This team really does hospitality so well! So well, that I just booked another stay in September! Thank you so much 4SNOLA! 5 Star experience from start to finish!!

I recently stayed at the Four Seasons New Orleans with my wife and toddler for our 4th stay at this hotel. We visit New Orleans annually for a combination work conference/weekend trip, and the Four Seasons has become our go-to hotel in the city, since we love the beautiful rooms and overall upscale feel, along with the great location. The actual execution of the experience, however, has varied quite a bit from year to year when it comes to service. I am happy to report that our stay this year was nearly perfect, with strong attention to detail and professional service throughout. We felt really well taken care of in this beautiful hotel this time. Trip Planning: As I always do when booking a Four Seasons, I reserved through a Preferred Partner travel agent, which enabled us to get free perks. For no extra cost, our reservation included a room upgrade based on availability at check-in, a one-time $200 hotel credit (it’s $100 standard rooms, $200 for suites), and a breakfast credit of $96 each morning, which could be used in the restaurant or for in-room dining. I had a little bit of communication with the hotel through the Four Seasons app before arrival for some basic requests like assistance with dining reservations, and it was all handled promptly and professionally. Prior to our trip, I also emailed with William, the Hotel Manager, after the prior Hotel Manager had encouraged me after our last trip to reach out before returning in the future. We were celebrating a special occasion this time, as my wife’s birthday was during our stay. I also wanted to make sure things were well-set for traveling with our toddler. William was absolutely wonderful both before and during our stay, making sure things were well in order for a memorable experience. Arrival: We arrived at the hotel in our rental car at around 5:30 pm on a Wednesday, and the arrival experience was strong. The doormen came right over to greet and welcome us in when we pulled up (a great improvement from the past). The door staff remained absolutely excellent throughout our stay, and were universally friendly, helpful, and kind to our daughter, even offering her cute little sunglasses and stuffed animals while waiting for our car. Valet parking is $75 per night, and there was a number we could text anytime we needed the car. This was easy, and always came with a reply that the estimated wait time was “13 minutes.” The actual wait time varied, and sometimes took longer, so it would be nice if this was actually updated and more accurate. Additionally, the valet staff themselves were ok, but it wasn’t clear if they were actually Four Seasons employees or contracted out. They just weren’t as friendly or thoughtful as other staff, and sometimes fixated on odd things, like one time insisting I had to have my original parking ticket with me to retrieve the car (which I had left in the room because I thought that was the whole point of the text service to call for the car). Upon entering the lobby when we arrived, Veronica at the front desk provided a warm welcome and easy check-in, offering us waters. William, the Hotel Manager, also came out during our check-in to say hello in person and welcome us in, which was wonderful. William also just had a great presence on the property, and found us in person to check-in at least once each day after that. This is particularly impressive at a city hotel where we’re not always on property. Room: We’ve stayed in a variety of room types at this hotel, from standard rooms to suites, and they’ve all been very nice. On our past couple of stays, we really loved the Executive Suites, and decided to book a suite again on this stay for extra space. However, this time, I went for the highest non-specialty suite, the River View One Bedroom Suite, since we were there to celebrate my wife’s birthday. Our suite was really lovely. It was a large space with everything we needed to enjoy our stay, particularly with having separate living and sleeping spaces with doors to close off when our daughter was napping. It didn’t feel significantly different than the slightly cheaper Executive Suites that we’ve liked in the past (although the One Bedroom Suite was clearly larger), but it had some nice features that the Executive Suites didn’t, including a full dining table for four rather than two, a full wet bar/sink in the living area, and a separate half bath. Otherwise, features were similar. We love the décor of the rooms, which is neutral, but upscale, with subtle touches of a southern feel, with nice art and accessories. The gray marble bathrooms are luxurious and so functional too, and the bathroom was particularly huge in this suite. I love things like the deep drawers and good counter space by the vanity, as well as the incredible water pressure in the shower. The One Bedroom Suites all have river views, and I really love seeing the river at sunrise and throughout the day to watch the busy boat traffic passing by. While the One Bedroom Suites are billed as having some of the best views in the hotel, we’ve had better views in lower level rooms here. The way the design of this room worked out, the view was excellent from the corner bedroom and the bathroom, but not nearly as good from the living room. That room didn’t directly face the river, and in our case was really a roof view. We spent most of our time in the living room, other than when sleeping. Since the view from the living room wasn’t great, we felt like we were always looking at the roof, and not nearly as often seeing the river. This was particularly not helped by the fact that we had requested a high floor, but were given a room on the 8th floor, which is a low floor in this hotel. Hotel rooms are on floors 6-18 of the building, so 8 is pretty low, and the roof of another section is right below. I had specifically requested a high floor with our travel agent, and we’ve almost always had rooms on the 16th floor or higher. It was frustrating to book an upgraded suite advertising a prime river view, only to find that the view was poor from the main living space, and it was on a low floor that we had asked to avoid. This didn’t impact our stay in a major way, but was frustrating. We had better river views in the Executive Suites, with windows more directly facing the river in both the living room and bedroom. We were very appreciative that the hotel offered baby amenities. We had requested a high chair and a diaper pail in the room, and both were ready and waiting for us upon arrival. There wasn’t a diaper pail available when we stayed here with our daughter the prior year, so we were glad to see that added to the amenities offered. We were also delighted to find a kids’ teepee waiting in the living room for our daughter. She enjoyed it, and it was a really cute surprise. We also received a cute crawfish stuffed animal (from one of the doormen mid-stay), after he asked if we had one yet. We were glad he mentioned it, since it hadn’t been placed in our room or offered at check-in. It was also nice to arrive to a welcome note from the General Manager and some treats in our room. There were bottles of Pellegrino and Acqua Panna water, along with some chocolates, which included a particularly cute one in the shape of a New Orleans streetcar (I love the local touch). They also provided applesauce for our daughter and some cute alligator-shaped dog treats for our dog, which impresses me, since we’ve never taken our dog to this property, but she has visited other Four Seasons hotels. Since my wife’s birthday was later in our stay, we were very happy to also receive a delicious mini-birthday cake delivered to our room on her birthday. We’ve received this cake each time we’ve stayed at this hotel for a birthday, and it’s very cute and tasty. They also brought it this year along with several additional mini-cupcakes and sparkling cider, making the presentation more extensive than what we’ve received in the past. The rooms here are well-stocked, and include a list on the mini-bar of various extra items that you can request. Before arrival, I had asked for two different types of pillows on the bed for my wife and myself, and the bed had already been set-up as requested when we arrived, which was great. Complimentary cans of water were left each day and during turndown, and there were generally a good number provided. One issue that I always flag at this hotel is sleep quality. There are train tracks that go directly below the hotel on the river side, and loudly sound their horns as they pass in the middle of the night. A sound machine is provided in the bedroom, which helps a bit, but it truly cannot drown out how loud those train horns can be. Despite the great and very comfortable Four Seasons beds, we’ve always found that our sleep at this property isn’t great and gets disrupted one or more times every night by the train. Otherwise though, our room this time was as quiet as it could be otherwise, being at the far end of the hall. Housekeeping did an ok job, but felt like one of the weaker departments in the hotel during this trip. For one, I found it odd that they never left enough towels in the bathroom. We had three people, and they would leave exactly three bath towels. This gave no wiggle room at all if someone needed an extra towel or wanted to bathe twice between room cleanings. There was plenty of space for extra towels in the huge bathroom, so I’m not sure why they were so stingy. It also felt like they did a very cursory cleaning job at times. For example, there were some obvious crumbs on the carpet one day in the living room, but it was clear vacuuming hadn’t occurred when we returned to our room later that day after cleaning had been completed. We then specifically asked for vacuuming that night during turndown, and even then, the crumbs were only partially cleaned up. We also typically request housekeeping using the Four Seasons app in specific time ranges each day, in hopes our room can be cleaned while we’ll be out. They would always respond right away and say the room would be cleaned as soon as possible upon our request, but there was one time they missed the window and came at an inconvenient time, which is always annoying. However, this only happened once. Dining & Bars: We continue to enjoy the dining options at the Four Seasons New Orleans, with the Chandelier Bar in the lobby serving as the focal point of the hotel and a popular spot for both hotel guests and outside visitors. The drinks are generally very good, and I love their sazerac. While the Chandlier Bar can get very busy, particularly at night, it’s nice that it’s open all day, and there are many pockets of time when it’s not full. There are also lots of comfortable lounge seating areas all around it, which usually always have space, even if the bar itself does not. While the menu isn’t huge, the food at the Chandelier Bar is quite good, and we enjoyed lunch there one day. The crispy chicken sandwich is our favorite, and the blue crab roll was good too. We were sad to see the pimento grilled cheese off of the menu, but everything we had was very good, and they were able to offer a kids’ meal for our daughter. We were really happy to see Jessica there again as a server this year. She remembered us from our stay last year, and is a great and really friendly server. Since my wife is currently pregnant, we were more focused on non-alcoholic options than usual, and felt that the mocktails at the hotel (both at the Chandelier Bar and Miss River) were a bit weak. They were mostly overly sweet and uninspired, so we’d love to see more effort put into those. Miss River is the hotel restaurant on the lobby level, featuring a menu that is meant to feature New Orleans classics. We typically eat there during every stay here, and chose it for my wife’s birthday dinner on this trip. While the food and service has always been good, the staff went out of their way to make this year’s dinner special, and we really appreciated that. A large group of staff came out as we entered the restaurant to all collectively wish my wife a happy birthday, the chef also separately came out to do the same, and we received great attention and extra treats throughout our meal, including a complimentary appetizer. Malik was a great server throughout. Some of our favorite dishes there include the gumbo, blue crab gratin and sweet potato brioche rolls as starters, and we always get the carved whole fried chicken as our main course. The other hotel restaurant is Chemin a la Mer, on the 5th floor of the hotel with river views, making it light and pleasant. We ate breakfast here twice, and it was enjoyable both times. The basic southern breakfast is always good (eggs, breakfast meat, and biscuits and gravy), as were the pancakes and smoked salmon plate. On Saturday, they also had a buffet option, although we still chose to order off of the menu. We’ve never seen a buffet option here in the past, so I’m not sure if that’s newer, and it only seemed to be on weekend days. The servers at breakfast were generally very nice, and even at breakfast they seemed to know it was my wife’s birthday and wanted to make it special. They first offered her a complimentary mimosa (which she couldn’t have since she’s pregnant), but then still sent us back to our room with a set of glazed beignets, which were truly the best beignets I’ve had in New Orleans. The only slight negative at Chemin a la Mer was that the host was surprisingly rude. She was just generally unfriendly, and when we said we needed a high chair, she just brought over a folded high chair in two pieces, not offering to set it up, and leaving us to figure it out, which was incredibly odd and poor service. We do really appreciate that all of the hotel restaurants are kid-friendly. Hotel guests five and under also eat free at the hotel restaurants, which is great, given that kids’ meals are not cheap. However, it was frustrating that very few staff members seemed to know about the free kids’ meals. Out of four meals we had at hotel restaurants, our daughter’s meal was only proactively taken off of the final check once. Servers should be reminded of the policy and encouraged to proactively offer the free meal at the time of ordering, rather than have it like a secret benefit that guests have to always remember to ask about. The final dining option is in-room dining, which we used twice for breakfast and once for dinner. In-room dining has always been a bit of mess on our previous stays here, either due to rude service, inaccurate or poorly prepared food, or both. I’m happy to report that things were much better on this trip. Food was all tasty, and the staff were all friendly. We only had one minor mistake in an order, which was something simple that was able to be fixed within 5 minutes. Pool: The Four Seasons New Orleans has an outdoor pool and large hot tub on the 5th floor, and the pool is heated to a very comfortable temperature, which we really appreciated in March. The pool deck itself is nice, especially for a city hotel. It has side views of the river, and they’ve made it more nicely decorated and landscaped over the past couple years, including with additional couch spaces, making it a very pleasant space to relax. The main frustration we’ve had in the past was that it’s been a bit unclear what the level of service is at the pool is (i.e., resort style service with full towel setup, food service, etc., or more of a self-service pool). This time, we visited the pool once on a warm Saturday afternoon in March, and it was a positive experience. While no one was around to proactively set up your space (but there were plenty of towels to take), there were servers coming around frequently to take food and beverage orders. While I like as full-service of an experience as possible, I thought it worked out fine how it operated on this visit. There are also things out like sunblock and goggles kids can use. There are several cabanas available on one side of the pool, which basically take up all of the seating on that side, but I’ve rarely seen them being used. I received an email before our stay offering one for $1250 for a day, and then we saw somewhere else during our stay that they were being offered for $750, which still feels quite high, given that this is just a city hotel outdoor pool, not a resort. We’ve paid significantly less for a cabana at a Four Seasons resort property, in a nicer setting with additional service. Location: I always note that we are fans of the location of the Four Seasons within Downtown New Orleans. It’s the only luxury hotel located directly on the river, positioned in a spot that is just close enough to major neighborhoods to be convenient to them on foot, including the French Quarter, CBD, Warehouse District, but it is just separate enough that it avoids some of the chaos and seediness in some of those areas. It’s also right on the Riverwalk along the Mississippi River, so you can walk that way to the French Quarter, which we found was an enjoyable way to get there. Service: Amateurish service has typically been my main complaint with this property, and I’m happy to report that service was really good this time. We’ve noticed in the past that, despite being a hospitality-focused market, achieving actual luxury service is challenging in New Orleans. However, things currently seem to be going well on finding and training good staff members, so I hope they can keep the momentum going. With very few minor exceptions noted above, everyone was helpful, friendly, and provided an appropriate level of service. I particularly appreciated how helpful the Hotel Manager William was. We really appreciated his extra attention and thoughtfulness. I was also really impressed at how well my wife’s birthday was recognized during our stay. On her birthday, she was wished a happy birthday so many times, with unexpected staff members like the doormen even knowing about it. The staff at Miss River coordinating a celebratory birthday dinner so well also ended it perfectly. I’ve found many hotels, even at a luxury level, fail to recognize special occasions as well as they could in easy ways, but the experience here was perfect. Departure Experience: Our departure experience was a little frustrating. I stopped at the front desk to review our final folio on the way out, which is usually a quick stop. However, it ended up taking a while, as the folio didn’t clearly show where credits had been applied, and the front desk clerk couldn’t explain it. On the folios, rather credits showing where applied, things will instead just disappear. Given the many charges we had during our stay, it was hard to confirm and verify what actually was and was not credited. A manager came out and was helpful in explaining things, but the whole thing felt unnecessarily tedious (she also said they’re soon updating their billing system to fix the exact issue we had, so that will be good). Beyond that, when I had a chance to review the bill in more detail on the way home, I realized there were other errors, including one night when we were double charged for valet parking. I reached out using the Four Seasons app to request an adjustment, but it also took two more rounds of revisions to get that simple adjustment right, which was frustrating and time consuming. Overall: Overall, the Four Seasons New Orleans is lovely, with great rooms and food and beverage options. While not perfect, I believe it’s probably the best hotel in New Orleans. I was really pleasantly surprised to have a smoother service experience on this trip than we’ve had in the past, and our special occasion being well recognized was greatly appreciated. We have already booked a stay for the same time next year, so we look forward to returning and hopefully having another positive experience.

The Four Seasons New Orleans is probably the place to stay in the Big Easy. It’s away enough from the uniqueness of Bourbon Street, where a cacophony of smells and sights are pervasive, yet close enough to all of the sights that most attractions are walkable. For the picky traveler (and let’s face it, if you’re staying at the Four Seasons you probably are), you should know that the New Orleans property isn’t quite as buttoned-up as other Four Seasons properties. There was lots of confusion and many varied answers to the same questions about different policies and, when a boil order occurred in the city, it was hours before guests were notified - after they conceivably would have used the water subject to the boil order. Outside of that niche circumstance, the property is lovely. The saltwater pool is beautiful and there’s even a bit of green space on the first level. I do wish guests could go to the locker room anytime they use the fitness center, but the locker room is only available from 9 to 6.