Best Hotels in Old Town Scottsdale: Where to Stay, What Makes Each One Different, and Cody Wolfe's Local Pick
Old Town Scottsdale draws visitors for reasons that have very little to do with any single hotel. It is a five-minute walk from a canal path to a rooftop pool to a gallery that has been open since the 1960s, and the version of Scottsdale a person experiences depends entirely on which block they wake up on. Choosing a hotel here sets the walk to dinner, the noise outside the window on a Saturday, and how much of the city a visitor actually sees without getting in a car.
Some of the hotels in this guide have shaped Scottsdale's identity for close to seventy years. Others opened within the last eighteen months and represent a newer, denser version of the same three-quarter-mile radius. I spend my career introducing buyers to these neighborhoods, and the question I get asked most often is where they should stay, usually from someone with parents or friends flying in. This guide answers that, organized by what each hotel actually is rather than by rank, and it includes the one I recommend most.
Understanding Old Town's Layout
Old Town is not one district. It is several smaller ones stitched together, and the difference matters more than star rating. Scottsdale Fashion Square anchors the northwest corner with roughly 250 stores and restaurants. South and west of the mall, the Waterfront runs along the Arizona Canal and connects on foot to the Scottsdale Civic Center, home to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. East of the canal sits Old Town's original core: Main Street, the gallery district, and Fifth Avenue, where Scottsdale's identity as an art town took shape in the 1960s. South of that is the Entertainment District, walkable to everything above but also the loudest stretch on a Friday or Saturday night.
A few minutes west by car, at the base of Camelback Mountain, sits The Phoenician, a resort that comes up in nearly every conversation about Scottsdale hospitality despite sitting outside Old Town's walking radius.
For readers considering Scottsdale as more than a place to visit, my July 2026 Scottsdale and Phoenix Housing Market Update looks at what is happening now with inventory, pricing, buyer activity, and the pace of the market across the Valley.
The Hotels That Built Scottsdale's Reputation
Hotel Valley Ho opened December 20, 1956, built by hoteliers Robert and Evelyn Foehl and designed by Edward L. Varney, a Phoenix architect who trained under Frank Lloyd Wright and later designed Sun Devil Stadium. Varney set the hotel around a central pool and used a curving, cast-concrete porte-cochere to draw guests into a soaring lobby, a technique borrowed directly from Wright. Central air conditioning let it stay open year-round, unusual for Scottsdale at the time, and within a year the hotel was hosting Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, and the wedding reception of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. Ramada bought it in 1973 and it closed in 2001 with its mid-century design buried under decades of remodels. Local ownership group Westroc Hospitality bought the property in 2002 specifically to restore rather than demolish it, spending $80 million with Phoenix firm Allen+Philp to expose the original brick, concrete, and steel underneath. It reopened December 20, 2005, exactly forty-nine years after its first opening, and the seven-story tower Varney had drawn but never built finally went up in 2008, using his original permits.
The Scott Resort & Spa dates to the 1960s and sits closer to Fashion Square, on Scottsdale Road just north of the canal. A $15 million renovation in November 2018 gave it its current identity: a Mission-style building reworked with color borrowed from Havana and New Orleans, mixed with cleaner Bauhaus geometry. It holds 204 rooms across two pools, one family-friendly and one adult lagoon-style retreat, plus a restaurant, The Canal Club, built around Caribbean-American food rather than the Southwestern menu found almost everywhere else in Scottsdale.
The Phoenician, while not in Old Town, earns an explanation here because its name comes up constantly. Financier Charles Keating built it on the site of the historic Jokake Inn at the base of Camelback Mountain, opening October 1, 1988, after spending close to $300 million on Italian marble, a 24-karat gold lobby dome, and nine Steinway pianos. Keating's savings and loan empire collapsed the following year and the resort was seized by federal regulators, a fact now as much a part of its story as the marble. It has changed hands several times since and completed a multi-year renovation in the late 2010s. It sits a few minutes from Old Town's core by car, not on foot, which is why it sits outside this guide's primary focus.
The New Wave: What's Opened in the Last Five Years
Old Town went nearly a decade and a half without a new hotel after the W Scottsdale opened in 2008. That changed fast starting in 2020.
Canopy by Hilton Scottsdale Old Town broke the drought first, opening October 1, 2020, at First Street and Marshall Way in the heart of the gallery district. A seven-story, 177-room hotel with a rooftop pool facing Camelback Mountain, it is arguably the most walkable property in this guide: SMoCA sits roughly a quarter mile away.
Senna House, a Curio Collection by Hilton, opened December 15, 2021, on the site of the old Don & Charlie's restaurant in the Entertainment District, developed by Opwest Partners with Argosy Real Estate Partners. At 169 rooms across six stories, it was Arizona's first purpose-built soft-branded hotel, designed from the ground up around a specific concept rather than converted from an existing building. It sits inside a five-minute walk of Fashion Square and directly inside the loudest stretch of the Entertainment District.
Caesars Republic Scottsdale opened March 2024, an 11-story, 265-room tower adjacent to Fashion Square and Caesars Entertainment's first U.S. hotel without a casino attached, which explains why it leans so heavily on dining and event space. Two restaurants from Giada De Laurentiis, a rooftop pool called WOLF Pool, and 20,000 square feet of event space make this the strongest choice in Old Town for a wedding or large corporate gathering.
The REMI, Autograph Collection, is the newest of the group, opening July 22, 2025, in the Entertainment District at a reported cost of $140 million. At 161 rooms with public spaces designed by the Rockwell Group, it was built around Scottsdale's tallest rooftop pool and five restaurants rather than meeting space, a deliberate move away from the traditional ballroom hotel model.
Why Some Travelers Skip the Big Resorts
Every hotel covered so far, aside from Senna House, has more than 150 rooms and at least one large event space built in. That scale brings amenities, but it also brings groups, wedding blocks, and a lobby that can feel more like a hub than a retreat. Senna House, at 169 rooms, sits closest to boutique scale among the newer properties, and its position on the site of a beloved former restaurant gives it a specific local story rather than a generic brand identity.
Walkability, Realistically
From Canopy by Hilton or Senna House, Fashion Square is roughly a ten-minute walk. From Hotel Valley Ho or The Scott, it is closer to fifteen. The Waterfront restaurants sit a similar distance from any of these five properties, and the Civic Center park connects directly on foot. The Entertainment District bars sit inside a five-minute walk of Senna House and The REMI, and a longer ten to fifteen minute walk from Valley Ho or Canopy. Scottsdale Stadium, spring training home of the San Francisco Giants, is close enough to Canopy and Senna House that guests in town for Cactus League games can walk over rather than drive. None of that applies to The Phoenician, which is built around its own grounds rather than a base for exploring on foot.
Who Should Stay Where
A weekend couple looking for atmosphere over amenities does well at Hotel Valley Ho, where the pool scene and ZuZu restaurant carry more personality than the newer towers. A group in town for a bachelorette or birthday weekend gravitates toward Senna House or The REMI, both inside the Entertainment District's five-minute radius. Business travelers are better served by Caesars Republic Scottsdale, which has the ballroom capacity the others lack. Golf groups and families wanting full resort grounds are the right fit for The Phoenician, accepting a short drive into Old Town rather than a walk. Spring training visitors benefit from proximity to Scottsdale Stadium, which points toward Canopy or Senna House. And for anyone seriously considering a move to Scottsdale, a few nights in the walkable core tells them more than any single showing will.
Cody Wolfe's Recommendation
CODY'S PICK
Hotel Valley Ho. Built in 1956, restored in an $80 million renovation completed in 2005, and still the property I recommend most to clients' visiting family.
People ask me where to book more often than almost anything else. Parents flying in for a weekend. A friend passing through on the way to a golf trip. A buyer who wants a few days on the ground before they commit to a neighborhood. My answer is almost always Hotel Valley Ho, and it is not because it is the newest or the largest. It is because staying there for even two nights teaches a visitor something true about Scottsdale that the newer hotels cannot replicate.
Valley Ho was built by people trying to create somewhere specific rather than franchise something generic, and every renovation since has protected that instead of erasing it. Walking through the lobby, guests stand under a ceiling Varney designed to give a sense of arrival borrowed straight from Wright, in a building that survived a decade of neglect because a preservation effort and a local ownership group refused to let it get torn down. That history shows up in small details a first-time visitor might not clock consciously but will still feel: the weight of the original concrete columns, the way the pool courtyard is the actual center of the property rather than an afterthought tucked behind a parking structure.
Location matters too. Valley Ho sits close enough to Main Street and the canal to walk to dinner most nights, but far enough from the Entertainment District that the pool deck stays calm rather than loud. That balance works whether someone is there for a quiet weekend, a golf trip with friends, or a work trip that still leaves evenings free to explore. It has the consistency of a hotel run by people who understand what makes it work, not a rotating series of management companies, and nearly two decades of operating history shows in details that hold up: service that does not feel like it is still finding its footing, a restaurant with an actual local following, and a pool scene that is genuinely part of Scottsdale's social calendar rather than an amenity built to photograph well for opening week. For buyers spending a few nights there before a neighborhood tour, it also happens to sit close enough to Old Town's core that the stay doubles as a useful first look at how the area actually lives.
For a closer look at how Old Town actually lives day to day, from walkability to housing stock to what a typical buyer looks like, see the full Old Town Scottsdale neighborhood guide.
Cody Wolfe is a real estate broker and Partner at The Agency Scottsdale, representing buyers and sellers across Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, McCormick Ranch, and Arcadia.
