First off, I am shocked that the Drury has fallen to number 2 in the top hotels list. No way it can be beaten. My wife and I were here for New Years 2010. I had wanted to stay in the Quarter, but the prices were sky high and we are by no means rich. I picked the Drury for our 3 nights stay. The prices averaged out to $175 a night if I remember correctly, a huge discount from the $250 or so average of everywhere else. To start to hotel is beautiful. The lobby exudes southern charm as does the wonderfully front desk staff (one of the employees spent 15 minutes calling various restaurants to find us some crawfish - it wasn't in season yet and was hard to come by). The happy hour food/drink and the breakfast were great. The food was plentiful and pretty good. Don't tell anyone but we actually brought some up to our rooms for late night snack (we had a fridge). The room was great. We had a larger room with huge floor to ceiling windows and the ceiling was very high. We actually had a great view of some nasty thunderstorms that rolled through one morning. Great stuff. The walk to the quarter was a snap - 3 blocks or so. Easy trolley access also. The only negative I can think of is that they were having some fire alarm problems while we were there (went off three times, once in the middle of the night which was annoying, but I'm sure that's been fixed by now). All in all, if you don't want to get ripped off in the quarter, don't want to be surrounded by the lovely, filthy debauchery of bourbon street, want good free food, a friendly staff, access to transportation to other parts of the city, and on and on and on, stay in the Drury. The Drury is the real number one hotel in New Orleans. Hopefully this review pushes it back to the top :-)
