ニューオーリンズ のベスト LGBTQ+フレンドリーなホテル

Last verified: October 2026. New Orleans has the oldest gay bar in America, the loudest gay street party in America and, in 2026, almost no gay hotels. The Lafitte Guest House, which for forty years was the answer to "where do gay men stay in the Quarter", has become the Lafitte Hotel & Bar and dropped every rainbow from its website; the Lions Inn, Macarty Park and Block-Keller House are gone; the only clothing-optional pool left in the city belongs to a queer-and-trans-owned guesthouse in Bywater. What the city has instead is a dozen gay-popular guesthouses and courtyard hotels within four blocks of the corner of Bourbon and St Ann, where Oz, the Bourbon Pub, Café Lafitte in Exile and Good Friends have stood within a hundred metres of one another since the 1980s, and a Marigny and Bywater of Creole cottages ten minutes further down Royal. This guide gives real walking minutes to that corner, says who is gay-owned and who merely has a courtyard, who closed, what Southern Decadence 2026 looked like and when it returns, the Mardi Gras and Halloween dates, the 16 per cent hotel tax, the short-term-rental ban, the bollards on Bourbon, Louisiana's laws and what they do and do not mean for a visitor, and where PEP is at three in the morning.

Pick by trip style

Where to sleep, in real minutes

Our listings carry a "nearest gay venue" line and a distance to the centre of the scene, which in New Orleans sits, correctly, on the 800 block of Bourbon Street. Multiply that distance by 1.3 and divide by 80 for walking minutes. The Quarter is flat and small: nothing in it is more than twelve minutes from the gay corner.

The corner. Oz at 800 Bourbon and the Bourbon Pub & Parade at 801 face each other across St Ann; Café Lafitte in Exile is a block up at 901 (open 24 hours, the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the United States, in this building since 1953); Good Friends is a block back at 740 Dauphine, Rawhide (which briefly traded as the Silver Fox) at 740 Burgundy, the Corner Pocket with its dancers at 940 St Louis, Crossing at 439 Dauphine, the Page on North Rampart, and the Bourbon Pride shop at 909. Hotels: the Lafitte is 99 metres from the shop and next door to the bar of the same name; Hotel St. Pierre 217 metres; Bourbon Orleans 121 from the Corner Pocket; Olivier House 106; Hotel St. Marie 97; Maison Dupuy 21 from Betty's on Burgundy; Dauphine Orleans 87 from Crossing; French Market Inn 62 from Rawhide; the Omni 266 from the Corner Pocket; the Monteleone, Royal Sonesta and Four Seasons eight to fifteen minutes down toward Canal.

Marigny and Bywater. Esplanade Avenue is the line. Beyond it the Golden Lantern at 1239 Royal (24 hours, where the Decadence parade starts), the Phoenix and the Eagle upstairs at 941 Elysian Fields (24 hours, leather since 1983, cards accepted at last since August 2026), Big Daddy's at 2513 Royal, Kajun's and the AllWays Lounge on St Claude, Wifey's on North Rampart, and in Bywater the Country Club at 634 Louisa, whose pool and hot tub (US$20 drop-in, drag brunch) have required swimwear since 2014. Lamothe House on Esplanade is 203 metres from the Golden Lantern; Royal Street Inn 475 from the Phoenix; Hotel Peter & Paul 154; the Burgundy B&B 278 from Kajun's; Auld Sweet Olive 364; the Frenchmen Hotel 453 from Big Daddy's; Railyard and the Lookout Inn about 300 from the Country Club, a twenty-five-minute walk or a ten-minute cab from the corner. Mag's 940, the Elysian Fields neighbourhood bar, closed in July 2026, and GrandPre's on North Rampart is gone (a drag-and-bingo bar called Le Cabaret is reported at the address).

No bathhouse. Club New Orleans on Toulouse has closed and Flex before it; the Rampart Street Sauna in our older listings is archived. Outdoor cruising is effectively finished and public sex is a felony in Louisiana; the Phoenix, the Corner Pocket and the Country Club pool are what remain.

Gay-owned, gay-popular, or merely friendly: the honest list

Railyard NOLA, 710 Poland Avenue, Bywater. Queer- and trans-owned, rebuilt in 2023 around a textile-optional saltwater pool with a hot tub and cabanas, six themed suites, adults only, sunset pool passes for US$15 if you are staying elsewhere. It is the only confirmed clothing-optional pool in New Orleans in 2026 and the most interesting place to sleep in the city. Deep Bywater: a cab or a bike to everything.

The Burgundy B&B, 2513 Burgundy, Marigny. Gay-owned, four rooms with private baths in a Creole cottage, a clothing-optional spa and hot tub in the carriage house, no men-only rule, rates by phone (504-261-9477) with a last-minute discount. Ten minutes to the Golden Lantern and the Phoenix, fifteen to Bourbon.

The Green House Inn, 1212 Magazine. Nine rooms in an 1840 Greek Revival house with a clothing-optional saltwater pool and hot tub, the gay inn of the Lower Garden District for two decades, rated 8.9. Its most recent reviews are from 2023 and its website would not load when we checked, so email before you book. Antebellum Guest House on Esplanade, long gay-owned with a sunken courtyard hot tub, is listed as open year-round by the state tourism office and has left no recent trace online; the same advice applies.

Lafitte Hotel & Bar, 1003 Bourbon. For forty years the Lafitte Guest House, the gay hotel of the Quarter by position (it shares a wall with Café Lafitte in Exile) and by marketing. It now trades as the Lafitte Hotel & Bar, fourteen rooms in the 1849 house with balconies over Bourbon, and its new website says nothing about who it is for. Older reviews complain of noise, air-conditioning and maintenance; there are no recent ones. It remains the closest bed to the bars in the city, and on Decadence weekend that is the whole argument.

The courtyard hotels. Hotel St. Pierre (911 Burgundy, two courtyard pools, continental breakfast, the base recommended for Halloween and Decadence by the gay guides, US$150–250), Olivier House (828 Toulouse, 42 rooms in an 1839 townhouse around two courtyards, gay-popular for decades), Hotel St. Marie (827 Toulouse, courtyard pool, from about US$120), Maison Dupuy (1001 Toulouse, the biggest courtyard pool in the Quarter), Dauphine Orleans (415 Dauphine, pool and a bar in a former brothel), French Market Inn (509 Decatur, pool, mainstream), Lamothe House (621 Esplanade, seasonal pool, the old gay-popular inn on the Marigny line, now mainstream). All are gay-friendly in the only sense that matters here: the staff have seen everything.

Bourbon Orleans, 717 Orleans. Renovated in 2024, courtyard pool, and the balcony rooms over Bourbon that are the best seats in the city for the Bourbon Street Awards on Mardi Gras Day and for the Decadence parade; already selling Mardi Gras 2027. US$180–280 normally, double or more for the big weeks, with the balconies gone a year ahead.

Grand and expensive. Monteleone (Carousel Bar, rooftop pool, host of Saints & Sinners in March), Omni Royal Orleans (rooftop pool, five minutes from the Corner Pocket), Royal Sonesta (Bourbon balconies six blocks down), Four Seasons (the old trade centre tower at the foot of Canal, from US$500), Virgin (rooftop pool in the Warehouse District, Halloween host hotel in past years), the Windsor Court (which ran an adults-only "LGBTea" for Decadence 2026). Hotel Peter & Paul in the Marigny, a church, school and convent converted into a hotel with the Elysian Bar, says in plain words that all orientations are welcome and holds a Pride drag brunch.

Marigny and Bywater guesthouses. Auld Sweet Olive (pool, 4.9 across 650 reviews), Royal Street Inn (five rooms above the R Bar, open till 3 a.m.), the Frenchmen Hotel (27 rooms and a pool on the music street), the Lookout Inn (four kitsch suites and a cocktail pool), Ashton's (1861 mansion on Esplanade), Creole Gardens in the Lower Garden District. Rathbone Mansions on Esplanade, with its pool and day passes, has been on the market; La Dauphine on Dauphine Street is listed as gay-owned by one directory and nothing else.

Apartments. New Orleans has one of the strictest short-term-rental regimes in the country: a near-total ban in the French Quarter and the Garden District, one permit per block elsewhere by lottery, owner-occupancy required, upheld by the federal appeals court in August 2026 and enforced with fines and power cut-offs. Legal Airbnbs exist in the Marigny, Bywater and Tremé; anything offered inside the Quarter is almost certainly illegal and may be cancelled under you. misterb&b has thin inventory here.

Who changed

Closed or changed: Lafitte Guest House → Lafitte Hotel & Bar (no longer gay-marketed). Lions Inn on Chartres, last reviewed 2018. Macarty Park Guest House, now a whole-house wedding rental. Block-Keller House, Bywater B&B, Marigny Manor House, Aaron Ingram Haus: no trace since 2024. Mag's 940 (July 2026), GrandPre's, Club New Orleans bathhouse, Flex. Rawhide locked its staff out in March 2025, reopened briefly as the Silver Fox, and is called Rawhide again by the local press in autumn 2026. Opened or confirmed: Railyard NOLA (2023), Wifey's queer bar on North Rampart (2025), Le Cabaret in the old GrandPre's. Added to our listings: twenty hotels and guesthouses from the Burgundy to the Four Seasons; we had seven.

A dispute worth knowing about. In October 2026 the Wood Enterprises bars (Good Friends, Café Lafitte in Exile, Rawhide) ended the free walk-in HIV testing that CrescentCare had run on their premises, after a leaked message about the testing crowd; the Phoenix offered CrescentCare space the same week. It revived memories of the 2019 "Stay Out of the Woods" boycott over the owner's politics. You will hear about it at the bar.

Rules, fees and bringing someone back

Taxes. Hotel rooms carry about 16.35 per cent in combined state, city, stadium and convention taxes plus a nightly convention-centre fee of US$0.50 to US$2 depending on hotel size; guesthouses with nine rooms or fewer pay only a 5 per cent levy, which is one reason the small inns are cheaper than they look. Short-term rentals add a US$12 nightly fee. A Quarter courtyard hotel is US$150–250 most of the year, US$350–600 for Mardi Gras, US$250–450 for Decadence, with three-to-five-night minimums and non-refundable deposits for both; the Bourbon Orleans balconies and the Lafitte sell out a year out.

Visitors. The guesthouses are "registered guests only", often with a minimum age of 21, and the small ones will notice a stranger in the courtyard at 3 a.m.; the hotels do not care. Nobody publishes a visitor fee. The Country Club and Railyard pools are the social alternative.

Drinking and smoking. You may walk the street with a drink in a plastic go-cup; glass is illegal on the street and alcohol is illegal in a car. Louisiana cannabis is medical only; possession of up to 14 grams is a US$100 fine in New Orleans, but a 2026 state law made use within 2,000 feet of a school a felony and the state made more than 9,000 cannabis arrests in 2025, so do not carry it to the parade.

Louisiana's laws and the city's. The state has passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors (in force since 2024), a bathroom law for government buildings, schools and prisons, a "don't say gay" schools law, a 2026 law on pronouns for public employers, and in May 2026 a "biological truth" bill. None of these regulate private hotels, bars or restaurants, and New Orleans' own ordinance (Chapter 86) protects sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations; the Human Rights Campaign scores the city 88 of 100. In better news, the state reformed its HIV criminalisation law in May 2026 (effective August) to require a substantial likelihood of transmission and to accept undetectable status as a defence. Visitors notice none of this on Bourbon Street; trans visitors should know the bathroom law applies in state and city buildings, not in bars.

Bourbon Street since 1 January 2025. Fourteen people were killed when a man drove a truck down Bourbon Street in the first hours of New Year's Day 2025. The National Guard patrolled through Carnival 2026; a plan for eighteen permanent crash-rated gates from Canal to St Ann was drafted but had not been approved when this guide was written; a permanent memorial is being planned. The city is otherwise safer than it has been in sixty years: 2026 is on course for the fewest murders since the 1960s and violent crime is down by two-thirds from 2022. Walk the lit streets of the Quarter and Marigny at night, take a cab to Bywater and back after midnight, and keep your phone off the table at the bar.

Decadence, Halloween, Mardi Gras and the weeks that matter

Southern Decadence, 2–6 September 2027. The 2026 edition (3–7 September, theme "Phoenix Rising") had six grand marshals for the first time, a parade on Sunday 6 September from the Golden Lantern down Royal Street with more than forty groups, an hour of rain on the Saturday, no hurricane and no trouble; the city says tens of thousands, the organisers say three hundred thousand, and the hotels say 80 per cent full. It is always Labor Day weekend, Thursday to Monday, so 2027 is 2–6 September. Book the Quarter in May.

Halloween New Orleans, 30 October to 1 November 2026. The 43rd edition: the Lazarus Ball on the Friday at the Barnett on Carondelet, the costume party on the Saturday at the Fillmore on Canal (costumes required), the tea dance and second line on the Sunday at the riverfront; every dollar to Project Lazarus, the HIV housing charity. Sleep in the Warehouse District or the Quarter; both venues are a ten-minute walk from either.

Mardi Gras: Tuesday 9 February 2027. The Bourbon Street Awards, the costume contest at Bourbon and St Ann since 1964, start at noon; the Fat Monday Luncheon (since 1949) is the day before; the gay krewe balls (Petronius, founded 1961 and the oldest surviving; Armeinius; Lords of Leather; Mwindo; Satyricon) run through January and the first week of February with dates announced late. Hotels want three to five nights, paid up front, and the balcony rooms are gone. The Gay Easter Parade is Sunday 28 March 2027; Saints & Sinners, the LGBTQ literary festival, is at the Monteleone in late March inside the Tennessee Williams Festival; New Orleans Pride is in mid-June, date not yet fixed; French Quarter Fest is early April and Jazz Fest 22–25 April and 29 April to 2 May 2027. Hurricane season is June to November; Decadence has been cancelled by storms twice (2008, 2021) and by Katrina in 2005; 2026 passed quietly. September is 31 to 33 degrees and 80 per cent humidity, which is why the bars are open 24 hours and the pools matter.

Three picks per budget

Under US$150. HI New Orleans on Canal for a bed; Hotel St. Marie for a pool three blocks from the bars; the Lookout Inn for Bywater.

US$150–300. Railyard NOLA for the naked pool; Hotel St. Pierre or Olivier House for the Quarter; the Burgundy for a gay house in the Marigny.

US$300 and up. Bourbon Orleans for the balcony on parade day; the Monteleone for the Carousel Bar; Hotel Peter & Paul for the Marigny done beautifully.

Getting in late and getting around

Louis Armstrong airport (MSY) to the Quarter: a taxi is a flat US$36 for one or two passengers (US$15 each for three or more), 25–40 minutes; Uber and Lyft US$28–50 plus the airport fee; the 202 airport bus is US$1.25 and takes an hour to Canal Street. In town: the streetcars and buses are US$1.25 a ride, a one-day Jazzy Pass US$3, three days US$8, on the Le Pass app; the Quarter is walked, the Marigny is walked by day and cabbed late, Bywater is a Blue Bike or a cab. Decadence closes Bourbon from St Ann to the river on parade Sunday and Mardi Gras closes the whole Quarter to cars for the weekend.

Health

PEP within 72 hours from any emergency room: University Medical Center on Canal Street at Galvez is the big public one; Tulane Medical Center a block away. By day, CrescentCare at 1631 Elysian Fields (and its Canal Street clinic) does free HIV and STI testing, PrEP, PEP and doxy-PEP, with PrEP for the uninsured, 504-821-2601; the New Orleans Pride Center on Orleans Avenue is the community hub. The walk-in testing that CrescentCare ran inside the Bourbon Street bars ended in October 2026; the Phoenix has offered space instead. Louisiana no longer prosecutes HIV non-disclosure without a substantial likelihood of transmission (since August 2026). Drink water between the go-cups; the heat kills more visitors than anything else.

New Orleans in a paragraph

Café Lafitte opened in 1933 and went "in exile" to 901 Bourbon in 1953 when a new landlord threw the gays out of the blacksmith shop; the Krewe of Yuga's ball was raided in 1962 and a hundred men arrested, and Petronius was chartered the year before so it could never happen again; the UpStairs Lounge at 141 Chartres burned on 24 June 1973 with 32 dead, the worst attack on gay Americans until Orlando, and its plaque, stolen in 2024, was replaced in June 2025; Decadence began as a going-away party in 1972; the Bourbon Street Awards have judged costumes on the corner since 1964. Tennessee Williams lived at 632 St Peter. The city is below sea level, above the law, 24 hours a day, humid, musical, broke, and kinder to strangers than anywhere in the South; it runs on Sazeracs, second lines, oysters and the understanding that what happens on the balcony is nobody's business. Book for Decadence in May, for Mardi Gras a year ahead, and come in October or March if you want to sleep.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a gay hotel in New Orleans?

Not a gay hotel as such. Railyard NOLA in Bywater (queer-owned, textile-optional pool) and the Burgundy B&B in the Marigny (gay-owned, clothing-optional hot tub) are the gay-owned houses; the Green House Inn and the Antebellum Guest House are the older gay inns, unconfirmed lately. The Lafitte Guest House is now the Lafitte Hotel & Bar and no longer markets itself as gay.

Where should I stay to walk to the gay bars?

Within four blocks of Bourbon and St Ann: the Lafitte, Bourbon Orleans, Hotel St. Pierre, Olivier House, Hotel St. Marie, Maison Dupuy, Dauphine Orleans. Lamothe House on Esplanade is the Marigny end, three minutes from the Golden Lantern.

Is there a clothing-optional pool?

Railyard NOLA's saltwater pool and hot tub in Bywater, confirmed for 2026, with sunset passes for non-guests. The Green House Inn's pool historically; confirm before booking. The Country Club pool has required swimwear since 2014.

When is Southern Decadence 2027?

Labor Day weekend, 2–6 September 2027, with the parade on Sunday 5 September from the Golden Lantern. The 2026 edition ran 3–7 September without incident.

Is the French Quarter safe after the 2025 attack?

Fourteen people died on Bourbon Street on 1 January 2025. Security was heavy through Carnival 2026 and permanent gates are planned; the city's murder rate in 2026 is the lowest in sixty years. Stay on lit streets, cab to Bywater late, mind your phone.

Can I bring someone back?

In the hotels, yes, without questions. The small guesthouses are registered-guests-only and some set a minimum age of 21; ask when you book.

Where is PEP?

Any emergency room within 72 hours (University Medical Center, 2000 Canal Street, is the main one) and CrescentCare on Elysian Fields by day, free testing and PrEP included.

Part of the GayOut hotels series. See the full gay New Orleans guide, the bars and the cruising guide.