Where to Stay in Hanoi — Old Quarter or Ba Dinh?
Choosing a Hanoi hotel: the Old Quarter versus the Ba Dinh and West Lake side, airport travel times, and what each area costs you in convenience.
Photo by Dean Erasmus on Unsplash PLAN THE DAYS
Find things to do in Hanoi
Once you have picked an area, compare tours, attraction tickets and local experiences against the route you will actually take.
GetYourGuide affiliate link — no extra cost to you
THE DISTRICTS
Browse by theme
- Ba Dinh
For a late arrival or an early flight in Hanoi: Ba Dinh is the quicker side for Noi Bai, while Hoan Kiem Lake is 2.7–4.2km away. Four hotels compared.
- Where to Stay in Hoan Kiem
To stay by Hoan Kiem Lake and the Old Quarter night market: six hotels 140–630m from the lake. The catch is the airport — 42–44 minutes to Noi Bai.
10 hotels in this city Each with its district, straight-line distances and its own page. Ordered by guest score.
- Fortuna Hotel Hanoi
345 rooms over 17 floors with conference and banquet space. Business travellers are the second-largest guest group, and the Old Quarter is 3.5km away.
- Hanoi Daewoo Hotel
Thirty minutes to the airport — the closest tier in Hanoi — with Lotte Center walkable and a pool and sauna guests rate highly.
- Lotte Hotel Hanoi
A 65-floor tower in Ba Dinh — quiet with large rooms, but Hoan Kiem Lake is over 4km away.
- Pan Pacific Hanoi
At the southern end of the causeway between West Lake and Truc Bach. Lake walking starts at the door, the Old Quarter does not — and the pool is indoors, which decides the winter.
- Apricot Hotel Hanoi
140m to Hoan Kiem Lake and 200m to the cathedral, in a 123-room hotel with lake-view rooms. The rooftop pool is closed until further notice, per the property.
- Bespoke Trendy Hotel Hanoi
On the western edge of the Old Quarter: a Grab can stop at the door, the cathedral is 490m away, and reviews keep mentioning the walls.
- La Siesta Classic Ma May
On Ma May street in the heart of the Old Quarter, with a 9.6 location score — and a Superior room type listed as having no window.
- Melia Hanoi
740m to the railway station, 630m to Hoan Kiem — with room types priced and sized for three and five adults.
- Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi
A 9.6 location score and 9.4 from couples — but the rate sits in a different tier from the rest of Hanoi.
- Somerset Grand Hanoi
A serviced residence with kitchens and washing machines. One-bedroom units start at 78 sqm and three-bedroom units reach 128 sqm.
Hanoi stays divide into the Old Quarter (around Hoan Kiem Lake) and the Ba Dinh / West Lake side.
The Old Quarter puts the sights and restaurants within walking distance, which suits a walking-first trip. In return you get narrow lanes, noise well into the night, and mostly small rooms. If that is your side, where to stay around Hoan Kiem Lake breaks the distances and airport times down property by property.
Ba Dinh and West Lake have the larger hotels, bigger rooms and quiet. But Hoan Kiem Lake is 3–4km away, so sightseeing means travelling each time.
How we choose the stays on this list
- Real distance to Hoan Kiem Lake and the main sights
- Drive time to the airport — Hanoi’s is far out compared to other Vietnamese cities
- Room configurations by party size, and how big the rooms actually are
- Drawbacks that come up repeatedly in guest reviews
Worth knowing about Hanoi
Noi Bai Airport is over 20km straight-line from the centre — but how long that takes depends on where you stay. Ba Dinh properties run 29–30 minutes; Hoan Kiem ones 42–44. Barely a kilometre separates them on the map, yet 13–15 minutes separates them on the clock, so on a short trip that number deserves a look before the walking radius does. Either way it is a heavier transfer than Da Nang or Nha Trang — for a late-night arrival, sort out a pickup in advance.
If you want Old Quarter sightseeing and a quiet room, the realistic move is to decide which one you are giving up rather than splitting the difference. A location halfway between the two ends up serving neither well.
February to April: read the humidity, not the rainfall
March in Hanoi has the most rain days of any month and very little rainfall to show for it. What falls is drizzle, and what really defines the season is condensation. Vietnam’s meteorological and hydrological administration calls it nồm: from February to April humidity climbs past 90%, water beads on floors, walls and mirrors, tiled floors turn slippery, and laundry will not dry in three days. March is the worst of it, and each episode runs from a few days to a week.
In this window the building matters more than the address. The rooms that struggle are small, low-floor rooms in older buildings — less ventilation, and surfaces that stay colder than the incoming air. The Old Quarter is where narrow lanes and small rooms cluster, so if you are travelling February to April, ask about the age of the building, which floor the room is on, and whether the air conditioning has a dry mode or a dehumidifier is available.
This is not something we can pin to a specific property. The phenomenon is documented; the state of an individual room is not something we can verify, so this page stops at what to ask. For the same reason, a laundry service is worth checking on these dates.
If Sa Pa follows Hanoi, settle the arrival time before the hotel. It is reached overland, so half of day one goes to the journey — and that, more than anything, decides whether you want to be in the town or out in the valley. Where to Stay in Sa Pa works through it.