What is the Best Western Plus Sundial?
The Best Western Plus Sundial is a 54-room, three-story hotel on Camelback Road, just east of the Scottsdale Road intersection — the corner Old Town shares with Scottsdale Fashion Square and the Waterfront. It describes itself as a contemporary boutique hotel designed in the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the low, horizontal look supports that more than most chain hotels’ design claims do. Rooms come with one king or two queens, and some have balconies or patios and jetted tubs. There are two suites.
Guests mostly book it for three things. The first is location: the mall, the canal-side restaurants, and the bar district are all walkable, so a car can stay parked for most of the stay. The second is breakfast: it’s free, and reviewers consistently describe a hot spread with made-to-order items rather than the usual waffle iron. The third is scale: with 54 rooms, check-in is quick and the staff learns your face.
The trade-off is that you’re close to everything, including the noise. Reviewers regularly mention bass from nearby nightclubs on weekend nights, and the front desk has been known to hand out earplugs.
It suits shoppers, couples on a moderate budget, spring-training fans who want to walk to dinner, and visitors who want Old Town without Old Town prices. If quiet matters most or you want a pool scene, go to the corridor resorts or the Valley Ho.
How to do the Sundial right
Pick your side of the building. If you plan to be out until last call, the noise won’t matter. If you won’t be, ask at booking for a room away from the entertainment district and bring the earplugs anyway. Weekdays are noticeably calmer than Friday and Saturday.
Make breakfast your first meal. It comes with the room and it’s good, which in Old Town’s brunch economy is worth a real amount of money per person per day. Eat here, then walk to Fashion Square when the doors open, before the heat and the crowds.
Walk at night, drive by day. Evenings are made for walking: across Scottsdale Road to the Waterfront’s canal patios, over the Soleri Bridge into the Marshall Way galleries, or into the bars. During the day, the free trolley covers downtown, and a car gets you to Camelback trailheads and the corridor resorts in a few minutes.
Confirm parking when you book. Some reviews describe free parking and others mention a fee. Ask so it doesn’t surprise you at checkout.
Book early for big weeks. A 54-room hotel this close to Old Town fills fast during spring training, Barrett-Jackson week and the WM Phoenix Open. For those dates, book months out, not days.
A Phoenix-born brand at Scottsdale’s retail crossroads
The Sundial’s corner owes most of its character to the mall across the street. Scottsdale Fashion Square opened in 1961 at Scottsdale and Camelback, when the city was barely ten years incorporated, and grew over the next six decades into the largest shopping center in the Southwest. Everything around it followed: office buildings, restaurant rows and, from the mid-2000s, the Scottsdale Waterfront, which turned an 1885 irrigation canal into condo towers and patios. In 2010, the Soleri Bridge connected that canal to the gallery district. A hotel at this intersection is selling a walkable slice of the city that took sixty years to assemble.
The sign has an Arizona story too. Best Western was founded in 1946 by hotelier M.K. Guertin as a referral network for independent motel owners in the postwar West, and it still runs on that model: each hotel is independently owned and operated under the shared brand. The company made Phoenix its headquarters, so the Sundial is a local operator’s hotel flying a brand that is itself local, which is unusual on a corner otherwise dominated by national developers. The Plus label marks the brand’s upper-midscale tier, one step above its basic properties.
The Sundial also fills a gap. Old Town’s lodging tends to split between landmark boutiques like the Valley Ho and the Scott, large branded hotels, and cheap motor courts. A 54-room, moderately priced hotel with a real breakfast, close enough to walk to everything, is rarer than it should be in a downtown this popular.
The location also works in March. Scottsdale Stadium, where the Giants have held spring training since 1984, is roughly a mile south through Old Town, close enough to walk to a Cactus League game on a mild afternoon and walk back for dinner.
Its main drawback comes from the same location. The entertainment district that makes Old Town lively also carries across Camelback Road on a Saturday night. That’s not a failing of the hotel so much as what it costs to stay downtown, and the people who book here understand that.