Hotel Henrietta

I travel to New Orleans quite often and was excited to try Hotel Henrietta on St. Charles opened by the owners of the Columns. First the positives; room decor is mid century modern and they are well done. The hotel has a small private parking lot behind the hotel and parking is FREE. Location is very convenient to uptown and Tulane University. Now for the negatives; upon checking in there were technical problems with the key to one of the rooms and it took 45 minutes (at 10pm after a day of travel) to get it resolved. They ended up moving us to different rooms after our bags had been locked in a room for quite some time. Upon check in I was given tokens for a free coffee each day but only for my room and not for the other room?? These are all relatively minor things that would not motivate me to write a trip advisor review. The big concern is that there were several times when I was leaving and arriving in the late evening where there was NO ONE anywhere in the lobby, lights were off and the front door was UNLOCKED. This is New Orleans-- to leave the lobby (and by extension the elevators) completely unsupervised at late hours is very unsafe and asking for a security incident to occur. Forget unprofessional or unorganized... this is about safety. Friday night I arrived back at 1 am and asked why the lights were completely off in the lobby. The one person there said that they turn them off at night. (what?!) Saturday night upon arriving back at 12:30am, the only staff member (a security guard) was sitting in his car in the parking lot behind the hotel where he had no view of the front desk let alone the front door. The door was completely unlocked and again all the lights were off. I was walking into a dark, empty hotel lobby at midnight. I felt compelled to share this experience as I am baffled and concerned about the complete lack of professionalism and prioritization of the safety of their guests. It is quite shocking to see this from the owners of the Columns. It was more like an Airbnb experience versus a hotel.

Great Fresh Hotel Staff was outstanding A rarity at N O hotels

Stay if you can. It’s great.