New Orleans hotel tax 2026: 15 percent combined plus 50 cents or a dollar per night

The combined rate

A New Orleans hotel room is taxed at a combined 15 percent in 2026 when the property has 10 or more rooms, according to the City of New Orleans sales tax rate page. That figure is assembled from four separate charges: the Orleans Parish sales tax, the Louisiana state sales tax, the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District room occupancy tax and the Ernest N. Morial Exhibition Hall Authority tax. Properties with 9 or fewer rooms are taxed at a combined 17 percent, because the state share on those is higher.

The flat nightly charge

On top of the percentage sits a Hotel Occupancy Privilege Tax, charged for each 24 hour period. The city lists it as $0.50 for hotels with 1 to 299 rooms, effective 7/1/2016, and $1.00 for hotels with 300 or more rooms. It is a per room charge, so a couple sharing pays it once.

A worked example

Four nights in a French Quarter hotel at $220 per night is $880 of room charges. At 15 percent the tax is $132. If that hotel has fewer than 300 rooms, add $0.50 for each of the four nights, which is $2.00. The government take is $134, or about 15.2 percent of the room rate. The same four nights in a nine room guest house would be taxed at 17 percent, which is $149.60, plus the same $2.00.

What the city page does not settle is whether any further tourism marketing district assessment applies to a given property, since that charge is not listed alongside the four it does name.

Sources: City of New Orleans, Orleans Parish sales tax rate.

More on New Orleans: places, reviews and what travelers say went wrong.