Where to Stay in Delhi — Best Hotels & Areas
Curated by Our Guild Explorers · Updated August 2026
Delhi is really two cities laid one beside the other, and the one you sleep in decides the shape of your trip. Lutyens’ Delhi — the broad colonial grid around Connaught Place, Janpath and Ashoka Road — has the flattest pavements in the city, three metro lines and India Gate within a stroll, and it is where most visitors should stay. South Delhi is greener, quieter and better for sleep. Aerocity, the modern hotel district by the airport, is level, spotless and the only place in Delhi where you can walk a dog on a proper pavement. Old Delhi is the one everyone photographs and the hardest place to sleep. Below are the city’s most dependable hotels by style, each with an honest note and a Book Me link straight to Trip.com.
Choosing Your Neighbourhood
Where you sleep in Delhi matters more than in most cities. Here is the honest lay of the land.
Lutyens’ Delhi, South Delhi, Aerocity or Old Delhi?
For a first visit, take Lutyens’ Delhi — the district of wide, tree-lined avenues around Connaught Place, Janpath and Ashoka Road. The pavements are level and continuous, which is not true elsewhere; Rajiv Chowk, Patel Chowk and Barakhamba metro stations are all here; and India Gate, Jantar Mantar, the National Museum and the Bangla Sahib gurdwara are within walking distance or a five-minute car ride. Every price point lives here too, from a sixty-dollar room inside the Connaught colonnade to the grandest hotels in India. The cost is noise on the outer circle and a certain amount of practised touting around Janpath — if a stranger tells you your emporium or monument is closed today and offers to take you somewhere better, walk on. South Delhi, around Friends Colony, Defence Colony and the Lodhi estate, is residential, leafy and markedly quieter, with the best independent restaurants and Humayun’s Tomb, Lodhi Gardens and the Qutub Minar close by; the trade is that the metro is a walk away and you will rely on cars. Aerocity, three kilometres from the airport, has no history at all and is the easiest place in Delhi to move around — new buildings, level entrances, lifts everywhere and a traffic-free pedestrian plaza — which makes it a sensible first or last night. Old Delhi we would visit rather than sleep in: the lanes around Chandni Chowk are narrow, uneven and often unreachable by car, so luggage travels the last stretch on foot or by cycle-rickshaw, and the day begins loudly at five. One more thing to weigh, which no brochure mentions: from November to January Delhi’s air is genuinely poor, and a hotel that filters its air is worth paying for in those months.
Luxury
Delhi’s top tier is one of the great bargains in world hospitality — genuinely grand hotels at roughly half what an equivalent room costs in London or New York, and with service that is warmer than either.
The Imperial New Delhi
Built in 1936 to a design by F. B. Blomfield, an associate of Edwin Lutyens, and set in eight acres of palm-lined lawn a few minutes’ walk from Connaught Place. It is the most restful grand hotel in India: long, flat, marble corridors hung with what is said to be the largest collection of colonial and post-colonial art in Delhi, so that a walk to breakfast becomes a small museum visit. The Spice Route, ten years in the painting, is the famous restaurant; Daniells Tavern and San Gimignano are the quieter rooms; and the Patiala Peg bar is where Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten are said to have met during the Partition talks. There is an outdoor pool and a spa. Ask for a Heritage Wing room rather than the newer wing, and take afternoon tea in the Atrium at least once.
Book Me on Trip.com ›The Oberoi, New Delhi
Delhi’s first modern grand hotel, opened in 1965, gutted to the frame and reopened in January 2018 with 220 rooms and suites — fewer keys than before, and much larger ones. Every room is glazed floor to ceiling over the Delhi Golf Course with Humayun’s Tomb beyond, which is the best hotel view in the city; ask for a high floor, as the lower ones look at the road. Dhilli is the modern Indian dining room (you may see it written under its old name, Omya), Baoshuan the Chinese, and Cirrus 9 the rooftop bar. There are indoor and outdoor temperature-controlled pools. The detail worth paying for: the hotel filters the air in the whole building, which between November and January is not a marketing line but a comfort.
Book Me on Trip.com ›Boutique
Two very different ideas of a small hotel — a restored merchant mansion in the lanes of the old city, and a quiet 1950s house behind a garden wall in the south. Both have fewer than twenty rooms; only one of them is easy to reach.
Haveli Dharampura
An 1887 courtyard mansion in the lanes behind the Jama Masjid, brought back from near-collapse by a six-year restoration using old lakhori brick and craftsmen who had worked on the Red Fort; it earned a special mention in the 2017 UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage awards. Fourteen rooms open onto a carved three-storey courtyard, Lakhori serves dinner at ground level, and the roof terrace looks straight across at the mosque domes as the kites go up in the evening. Be clear-eyed about the approach: no car reaches the door, and the last two hundred yards are on foot or by cycle-rickshaw through crowded, uneven lanes. A lift is listed, but ask which rooms it actually serves before you book.
Book Me on Trip.com ›The Manor
Delhi’s original design hotel: a 1950s private house in the tree-lined South Delhi enclave of Friends Colony, standing in almost an acre of walled garden, with fewer than twenty rooms and suites. It reopened in 2019 after a year-long redesign and remains the quietest bed in the city — no street noise at all, which light sleepers will feel on the first morning. There is a fine-dining room, a European café and a French patisserie, but no pool. One correction worth making, since it is still printed everywhere: Indian Accent, the restaurant that made this house famous, moved to The Lodhi in 2017. Budget twenty-five to forty minutes by car to Old Delhi; there is no metro at the gate.
Book Me on Trip.com ›Budget & Value
Value in Delhi is remarkable — a clean, well-run, centrally placed room with breakfast for the price of an airport motel at home. Both of these are inside the Connaught Place circle or a lane off it.
Bloomrooms @ Janpath
A small Indian design-budget house in a lane off Janpath: thirty-eight crisp white-and-yellow rooms, free breakfast, good wifi, a lift, and a genuinely helpful desk. Connaught Place, the Janpath market and Rajiv Chowk metro are all a few flat minutes away, and The Imperial’s tea lounge is a ten-minute walk if you fancy the grandeur without the room rate. Two honest cautions for anyone who values space: the rooms are small and the bathrooms smaller, several have a step up into the bathroom, and a few have little natural light — ask for a bright room away from the open coffee nook on each landing, which carries sound.
Book Me on Trip.com ›Hotel Palace Heights
Fourteen rooms tucked into the colonnaded Georgian arcade of Connaught Place’s D Block — you are inside the circle itself, two minutes from Rajiv Chowk metro and walking distance from Janpath, Jantar Mantar and the Bangla Sahib gurdwara. The rooms are larger and better finished than the price suggests, and Zaffran, its North Indian restaurant, is well enough regarded that Delhi residents eat there. One thing we could not confirm and you should: the hotel occupies upper floors reached from a single door in the arcade, and no listing states that there is a lift. Telephone and ask before booking if stairs are a difficulty. Connaught Place is lively into the evening — request an inner-facing room.
Book Me on Trip.com ›Family-friendly
Delhi is not a resort city, so family strength here means practical things: connecting rooms, a heated pool, enough restaurants that nobody has to go outside on a bad-air day, and a lift that works.
Shangri-La Eros, New Delhi
Note the name, which changed some years ago and is still printed the old way: it is Shangri-La Eros, New Delhi, not Shangri-La’s Eros. Three hundred and twenty rooms on Ashoka Road, and one of the few genuinely walkable luxury addresses in the city — Patel Chowk metro is six minutes on foot, India Gate five minutes by car, and Rajpath essentially at the door. Children stay free and babysitting can be arranged; connecting rooms are easy to secure. The dining is unusually broad for a family base — Shang Palace for Chinese, Sorrento for Italian, Tamra for a buffet wide enough to satisfy a fussy grandchild, and the Grappa bar for the adults afterwards. There is a pool and a hydrothermal suite with steam, sauna and cold plunge.
Book Me on Trip.com ›The LaLiT New Delhi
The big, sensibly priced central option: 461 rooms and suites on Barakhamba Avenue, half a kilometre from Connaught Place and five minutes from Barakhamba Road metro. Its size is the family advantage — connecting and triple rooms are genuinely available rather than theoretically so, and the sheer number of restaurants means a bad-air afternoon can be spent entirely indoors without anybody complaining. Baluchi does Mughlai, OKO pan-Asian, The Grill Room steaks, and there is a twenty-four-hour room besides. The outdoor pool is heated, which matters from December to February when Delhi nights fall into the forties Fahrenheit; there is a spa, and an art gallery on site. The hotel also publishes provision for guests with disabilities, which is still uncommon here.
Book Me on Trip.com ›Adults-only
We could not verify a single genuine adults-only hotel in Delhi, and we will not invent one. This is worth explaining, because the booking sites will suggest otherwise. In India a listing marked ‘couple friendly’ means the hotel will check in an unmarried local couple without questioning them — it is a rule about marital status and identity documents, not about excluding children, and a good many of the properties carrying it are short-stay budget houses that no American reader would want. The aggregator filters simply relabel that stock. If what you want is a quiet, grown-up stay, book a small heritage house instead: The Manor or Haveli Dharampura, above, have no children’s clubs and no family suites, so the calm arrives by arithmetic rather than by policy. The live listings are below if you would like to look for yourself.
Browse adults-only stays in Delhi ›Pet-friendly
Delhi’s pet-friendly hotels are concentrated in Aerocity, the modern district by the airport, and the reason is practical: it is the one part of the city with clean, kerbed, traffic-free pavement to walk a dog on. Most of the grand hotels — including The Leela Palace, which is often wrongly listed — do not accept animals at all. Confirm any pet booking in writing.
Pullman New Delhi Aerocity
The most reliably pet-friendly good hotel in Delhi, and the one to try first. Dogs of any size are welcome for a modest nightly charge and cats by arrangement; the policy is published rather than whispered. It sits in the hospitality district three kilometres from the airport, with the Airport Express metro a short walk away and New Delhi railway station twenty minutes down the line. Farmers Basket at Pluck is the farm-to-table signature, Honk the pan-Asian room, and Café Pluck runs around the clock. The pool is temperature-controlled. As a modern building it is also the easiest hotel on this page for anyone using a stick or a wheelchair: step-free entry, wide corridors, lifts throughout.
Book Me on Trip.com ›ibis New Delhi Aerocity
The affordable half of the same answer, two hundred metres from the Pullman and under the same ownership. Four hundred and forty-five air-conditioned rooms, a small nightly pet charge, dogs of any size and more than one permitted — but cats, unlike at the Pullman, are explicitly not accepted, so read the policy rather than assuming. There is a pool, a gym and an all-day restaurant, and valet parking is free. The rooms are compact and plainly furnished rather than charming, but every one is step-free and served by a lift, and the landscaped Worldmark plaza next door gives you somewhere level and traffic-free to walk a dog after a long flight — a rarer thing in Delhi than it sounds.
Book Me on Trip.com ›Don’t see your perfect fit?
Browse every Delhi hotel with live prices and availability on Trip.com. Booking through our links supports Destinations Guild at no extra cost to you.
Delhi Hotel FAQ
The questions travellers ask most before booking a room in Delhi.
Which area should I stay in for a first visit to Delhi?
Lutyens’ Delhi, around Connaught Place and Janpath. It has the flattest and most walkable pavement in the city, three metro stations, India Gate and the National Museum within strolling distance, and rooms at every price from sixty dollars to four hundred. Choose South Delhi instead if quiet and clean air matter more than sightseeing convenience, and Aerocity for arrival and departure nights only.
What should I expect to pay for a hotel in Delhi?
Delhi is one of the best-value capitals in the world. A clean, well-reviewed central three-star with breakfast runs about sixty to a hundred and ten dollars a night; a good international five-star a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty; and the genuine landmarks — The Imperial, The Oberoi, The Leela Palace, the Taj Mahal New Delhi — three hundred to five hundred, which is roughly half their London or New York equivalents. Allow another thirty to fifty dollars a day for a car and driver, which is the sane way to move about.
How bad is Delhi’s winter air, honestly?
Bad enough to plan around, and we would rather say so plainly. The peak sightseeing weather and the peak smog overlap almost exactly: November to January brings crop-stubble smoke from the surrounding states, Diwali fireworks, construction dust and a windless temperature inversion that holds it all at street level, and readings regularly reach the range the American index calls hazardous. If you have asthma, emphysema or a heart condition, treat this as a medical matter rather than an inconvenience: keep Delhi short in those months, choose a hotel that filters its air, pack fitted N95 masks and plan indoor mornings. February and March, and late September into October, give you the good weather without the worst of the air.
Will the hotel pool actually be usable?
Only if it is heated, and in Delhi that is the word to look for. Nights fall into the forties Fahrenheit from December to February and an unheated pool goes unused. The Oberoi has both indoor and outdoor temperature-controlled pools, The LaLiT’s outdoor pool is heated, and the Pullman in Aerocity keeps its pool temperature-controlled year round. The small heritage houses — The Manor, Haveli Dharampura — have no pool at all, which is worth knowing before you arrive hoping for one.
Are Delhi hotels comfortable for older travellers?
Many are, and the things to check are consistent. Ask about lift access, because heritage houses and arcade hotels often have stairs and do not always say so; ask which way the room faces, because Connaught Place and the old city are loud well into the night; and ask whether the entrance is step-free. Aerocity and the modern five-stars are the easiest going, the Lutyens’ hotels have flat corridors and level gardens, and Old Delhi is the one area we would visit by day and sleep away from. A hired car with a driver, at about thirty to fifty dollars a day, does more for a comfortable trip here than any upgrade.