Alexandra M.
Yelp
I'd give La Quinta a solid 2.5 stars if I could.
Two of my friends and I decided to do an impromptu trip to New Orleans for the first time after finding super cheap flights here ($99 round trip!). We booked La Quinta Downtown since it was right in the heart of the central business district and was in good proximity to pretty much everything we wanted to do while we were down here. The hotel itself is clean, has no bedbugs, and offers free breakfast and a free welcome drink upon arrival. They will hold your luggage if you get there before your check-in time and they will also hold your luggage for you in a secure checked baggage area if you need to check out before your flight so you're not hauling around your suitcase all day. I did really appreciate those and I wish I had known those when we came to check in since we ended up toting our luggage on the first day here for six hours while we waited for our room to be ready (not the hotel's fault, we requested early check in at 1pm but we arrived in NOLA at 7am). We were able to request early check in for an additional fee ($30) and they do have a very small outdoor rooftop pool (you enter at 3ft and it goes to 4ft) on a balcony on the fifth floor that has some good views of the city.
Now, for the downsides, I did struggle with a rude employee our first morning at breakfast that did not want to give me ingredient and allergen information citing that they were too busy and it would be too difficult for her to do so, and claimed that the front desk would be able to help me. Another kitchen staff, I believe it was the manager, overheard this employee and escorted me to the front desk to try to get this solved, but the front desk did not have any information and it turned out the kitchen manager was able to get the information incredibly easily and very quickly (like less than 30 seconds). I would highly recommend that they emphasize to all of their employees of the importance of taking food allergies seriously, and creating some sort of binder to keep in the kitchen area that has all the ingredient information for their breakfast foods so that this doesn't happen again. Every hotel I've ever been to either has the information available as a PDF on their website, or in that binder I was talking about being kept in the kitchen area. Breakfast was pretty good, although that was the worst coffee I've ever had. Also, we booked for two nights here and we learned that housekeeping would only come every three days to switch out towels and sheets, and if you wanted them to come more often, you could do so upon request but only with 24 hours notice. I thought this would mean that housekeeping would still come daily to vacuum, wipe down counters, empty trash cans, restock toilet paper, soaps, etc. but apparently it means they literally only come every 3 days for everything. On our reservation, we noted we'd be a group of 3, but when we went to take night showers, there were only 2 towels. I called the front desk at 8pm on Saturday to request more towels, toilet paper, and a few other things that came with our room, but housekeeping never came. The next morning, we called again. They told us housekeeping was running late that morning but they still had our request down from the night before. Do they not have 24/7 housekeeping on shifts? What if a kid wets the bed and needs new sheets, or you run out of toilet paper, like we did? They made no mention to us when we called the first night that we'd have to wait almost 14 hours for toilet paper and towels and that they didn't have a night shift housekeeping. At least let us know so we can prepare better... We got our stuff the next morning at almost 10am.
The elevator was super jumpy and kept trying to close on us as we would get in. The elevator floor was sticky. The tv volume in our room wouldn't go below 15 (it would only go higher or mute completely). The bathroom had French doors that didn't lock (pretty, but impractical). No bathroom fan, and only one trash can in the whole room (in the bathroom). They have free WiFi, but it wasn't available.
Overall, for the price of the room and the proximity to everything else. I think this hotel got the job done. It was good enough for our stay, but I'd take a look around next time for something else.