New Orleans is home to hundreds of hotels, hostels and B&B’s (26,000 downtown hotel rooms and counting!) with more opening and/or renovating every year. Whether you’re looking to live luxuriously, immerse yourself in history or simply rest your head at eco-conscious hotels, these new places to stay give you somewhere unique to reenergize. Almost $1 billion dollars in renovations have been recently completed and are anticipated to begin in our hotel community.

New Orleans is home to some of the top museums and attractions in the country including The National World War II Museum, ranked No. 3 in the country and No. 8 in the world by TripAdvisor. Several attractions around the city are undergoing renovation and expansion. Read on and discover the new ways you can immerse yourself in history and fun in the city.

LEED Certification

• The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center (NOENMCC) has achieved its first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, a major milestone in its ongoing commitment to sustainability.
• This official certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) makes the NOENMCC the largest LEED-certified project in Louisiana, the largest convention center project in the U.S. certified under LEED v4.1 Operations and Maintenance and the first convention center in the world to be awarded initial certification under LEED v4.1 O+M.

Artemis Rocket

• In the Fall of 2021, NASA’s Michoud facility in New Orleans East completed a 322-foot Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA. 
• The rocket will be tasked with carrying the first woman and person of color to the Moon. 
• Michoud is known as “America’s Rocket Factory” and functions as the nation’s premiere site for manufacturing and assembling large scale space structures.

Haliade-X 12 MW offshore turbine

LM Wind Power’s Technology Center Americas facility (TCA), based on the NASA Michoud campus, has built the world’s longest offshore wind turbine blade at 107 meters in length.

Port of New Orleans Container facility

• $1.8 billion state-of-the art container facility on the lower Mississippi River. The new Louisiana International Terminal (LIT) in St. Bernard Parish will be able to serve vessels of all sizes, dramatically increasing Louisiana’s import and export capacity and stimulating the creation of more than 17,000 new jobs statewide by 2050, the Port of New Orleans estimates.

Louisiana Wind Energy Hub at UNO

The Beach at UNO, the University’s Research and Technology park, hosts the Gulf’s premier ecosystem for innovation, entrepreneurship, and education in offshore wind energy, which strives to accelerate the growth of the state’s wind energy innovation ecosystem.

H2theFuture Coalition Grant 

• EDA awarded a $50 million federal grant to H2theFuture to develop a new energy cluster in South Louisiana spanning the clean hydrogen life cycle for an end-use project at the Port of South Louisiana.
• New Energy Center of the U.S. (NEXUS) will be established at The Beach at UNO and serve as the physical and programmatic hub for a range of clean energy initiatives.
• UNO will also receive $6 million for a Maritime Green Energy Lab that will serve as a testbed and development center for hydrogen-fueled ships.

Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL) Oyster Shell Recycling Program

CRCL partners with more than 2 dozen restaurants in the New Orleans area, as well as two drop-off locations, to collect oyster shell and return it to the water, where oyster reefs slow erosion and create habitat for new oysters to grow. Since 2014, CRCL has recycled more than 13 million pounds of shell, making this Oyster Shell Recycling Program one of the largest such programs in the country. CRCL partners with coastal communities and volunteers to place the shell into biodegradable mesh bags and then place the shell in the water. They’ve built five reefs so far, and they're just getting started.

For a list of even more sustainability initiatives and green practices in New Orleans, visit our Sustainability Page here.