This towering Sheraton is set across the street from the French Quarter. Inside, the atrium lobby features galleries, a fountain, lounge, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking historic Canal Street.

Just off Julia Street in the city's chic Arts and Warehouse District, the Embassy Suites was built for the World's Fair, which was held in New Orleans in 1984. A recreation of Bourbon Street, complete with colorful mannequins of jazz musicians, fills the wall of the lobby. Off the registration area guests find the hotel's mood-lit lounge, Madeline's; and the expansive, six-story lobby.

• A half-mile from Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, this central New Orleans hotel is a mile from Harrah's Casino.
• Guestrooms include coffeemakers, desks, in-room safes, hair dryers, data ports, and cable TV with HBO.
• Amenities at this Days Inn include a seasonal outdoor pool, lobby bar, and breakfast restaurant.

With 1,310 rooms, the Marriott New Orleans is one of this city's largest hotels. Generally flush with conference attendees, on a given weekend it contains seemingly half the nation's human-resource coordinators or American-studies professors. It has the sort of vast, football-field-size lobbya slightly raised bar-lounge surrounded by a wide walkway with chairswhere cell phones are essential tools for meeting up.

In addition to its enviable location on the banks of the Mississippi River, this grand hotel is conveniently located next to the convention center. It is also across the street from Harrahs Casino, and attached to Riverwalk Marketplace with its 140 shops and restaurants. Business and leisure travelers appreciate the Hiltons superior service standards along with the magnificent city and river views.

This Garden District hotel, one block from the streetcar line, attracts corporate travelers, cruise ship passengers, and vacationers. The small lobby opens onto a patio, where a complimentary Continental breakfast is served daily. Guestrooms are in four historic buildings connected by landscaped walkways.

Guests enter another world when they pass through an enclosed courtyard into a lobby decorated with fine arts, sculpture, marble floors, live plants, and plush English manor-house furnishings. Vacationers and business travelers appreciate the hotels exquisite service standards as well as its location. Its near the action of the French Quarter, but far enough away to allow for peaceful sleeps.