What is Aloft Scottsdale?
Aloft Scottsdale is a five-story, 126-room hotel on Civic Center Plaza in the middle of downtown Scottsdale’s Entertainment District. Until 2016 it was the Hotel Indigo Scottsdale. That year it went through a roughly $4 million conversion and reopened on May 9 as the city’s first Aloft — the brand that Starwood created as a younger, cheaper sibling to W Hotels, now part of Marriott.
The style is what Aloft is known for: bright colors, loft-style rooms with big windows and walk-in showers, a lobby bar called W XYZ with live local music on some nights, and a 24-hour grab-and-go pantry called Re:fuel instead of a restaurant. There’s an outdoor heated pool and a fitness center.
The location is the reason to book. You’re a short walk from Scottsdale Fashion Square, the Waterfront and the canal, and the Old Town nightlife blocks — the bars and clubs of Saddlebag Trail and Stetson Drive — are right around you. The W Scottsdale and The REMI are neighbors.
Who it suits: groups of friends, bachelorette weekends, shoppers, and travelers with dogs up to 40 pounds who want to walk everywhere and pay less than the hotels next door. Who should look elsewhere: light sleepers on weekends, families looking for free breakfast, and anyone who wants a resort pool or quiet. On Friday and Saturday nights, the neighborhood is loud until closing.
How to do Aloft Scottsdale right
Choose your floor. The Entertainment District is lively late into the night, especially on weekends. If sleep matters, ask for a high floor on the side away from the street. If you’re here to go out, it doesn’t matter — you’ll be home late anyway.
Use the walkability. Fashion Square, the Waterfront, the Arizona Canal and dozens of bars and restaurants are all within a few minutes’ walk. You can skip the car for most of a weekend. If you do bring one, self-parking is paid.
Plan breakfast. There’s no free breakfast and no full restaurant. Re:fuel has grab-and-go food around the clock and W XYZ serves light bites, but for a real breakfast walk into Old Town or to the Waterfront.
Bring the dog. Dogs up to 40 pounds are welcome for a nightly fee. The Arizona Canal path a few minutes north is the best morning walk, and in fall it’s where Canal Convergence lights up the water.
Drink at the neighbors, then come home. The appeal of Aloft is that the W, The REMI’s rooftop and the district’s clubs are steps away, but your room costs less. Have a cocktail on someone else’s roof and walk back.
Know the big weeks. During the WM Phoenix Open, Barrett-Jackson and spring training, Entertainment District hotels fill early and rates jump. Book well in advance for those weeks.
How the Entertainment District got its hotels
The northern blocks of downtown Scottsdale, between the canal and Indian School Road, used to be the quiet end of town. Fashion Square opened at Camelback and Scottsdale roads in 1961, but for decades the blocks south of it were a mix of offices, small shops and parking lots. In the early 1990s developers tried an upscale enclosed mall, the Scottsdale Galleria, which opened in 1991 and closed about two years later. Industry listings date this five-story hotel building to the mid-1990s, from the same period of experimentation.
For years it operated as the Hotel Indigo Scottsdale, under IHG’s boutique brand, while the neighborhood around it changed. The biggest change came from developers Steven and Shawn Yari. Their family firm developed the W Scottsdale, which opened in 2008 and anchored what the Yaris marketed as a live-work-play Entertainment District. Their hospitality company went on to run several of the district’s bars and clubs, and Saddlebag Trail and Stetson Drive became one of the Valley’s busiest nightlife strips.
In 2016, Stockdale Capital, the Yaris’ investment firm, converted the Hotel Indigo into an Aloft. The Aloft brand had been invented by Starwood as a more affordable cousin of W, so the move gave the family both brands within a few blocks of each other: one expensive, one mid-priced. The conversion cost about $4 million and the hotel reopened on May 9, 2016, as the brand’s first in Scottsdale. Starwood became part of Marriott later that year.
The story continued in 2025, when the same family opened The REMI, a 12-story Autograph Collection hotel around the corner on Buckboard Trail, next to their Maya nightclub. Together, the W, the Aloft and The REMI show how much of the Entertainment District was shaped by one family’s plan: hotels to fill the bars, and bars to fill the hotels.
For visitors, that history explains the Aloft’s character. It isn’t a resort or a quiet retreat. It’s a mid-priced room in the middle of a neighborhood built for going out, and it does that job well.