What it means
The Princess is the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, and in Scottsdale nobody uses the long form. It is the sprawling Spanish-colonial resort on Princess Drive beside TPC Scottsdale, a place locals know whether or not they have ever slept there, because two of the city’s biggest annual rituals happen on or next to its grounds.
In February it is the hotel for the Phoenix Open: corporate tents, golf fans in matching shirts, a lobby that sounds like a sports bar. In December it is the backdrop for Christmas at the Princess, millions of lights around the lagoon and a skating rink in the desert. “Are we doing the Princess this year?” is a holiday question in a lot of Scottsdale households, and it means the lights, not a room.
The resort itself, its pools, restaurants and booking advice, is covered in the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess guide, and the holiday festival has its own Christmas at the Princess page. This page is about the name.
Where you’ll meet it
Phoenix Open week, the holiday season guide, directions to WestWorld (“past the Princess”), the where to stay guide, and any conversation about the 16th hole.
Where the word came from
“Princess” was a hotel brand before it was a Scottsdale place name. The chain’s best-known properties were the Acapulco Princess in Mexico and the Hamilton and Southampton Princess hotels in Bermuda, part of the hotel collection assembled by the shipping magnate Daniel K. Ludwig. When the chain planned a desert resort, it called it the Scottsdale Princess, and it opened in December 1987.
The timing was not an accident. The Phoenix Open had moved that same year from a Phoenix country club to the brand-new Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale, playing its first round there on January 22, 1987. A mega-resort beside a stadium golf course was the plan from the start, and the resort and the tournament grew up together.
In 1998 Canadian Pacific Hotels bought the Princess chain, and the company that emerged from that era of deals took the Fairmont name. The Scottsdale resort became the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess: the new owner put its brand in front and left the old one standing. Locals simply ignored the addition. By then “the Princess” was not a brand at all; it was a landmark, the way people give directions.
What it is not
It is not TPC Scottsdale, which is the city-owned, PGA Tour-run golf complex next door, and it does not host the Phoenix Open; the Thunderbirds do, at TPC. It is also not the Phoenician, the other big Scottsdale resort with a one-word nickname, which sits at the foot of Camelback Mountain miles to the south.
The fine print
The numbers have moved over the decades. The resort sits on 65 acres; a 2012 profile counted 649 rooms, and with later additions of towers, casitas and villas it now runs to roughly 750. The skating rink at Christmas at the Princess dates from 2012, and the festival has since become one of the largest holiday events in Arizona.
The name has outlasted at least one corporate rebranding, and possibly more ownership changes than this page can document; the sale history of the property itself is not something we could confirm from sources we opened, so we leave it out. What is certain is the sequence of brands: Princess from the 1987 opening, Fairmont in front of it after the 1998 sale of the chain.
The Princess name also spread beyond the resort. Princess Drive carries traffic past the resort toward WestWorld, and the surrounding district goes by Princess and WestWorld on this site and in common use. That is the surest sign of a stuck name in Scottsdale: when a resort’s brand becomes the way people describe a whole corner of the city.