What is Embassy Suites Scottsdale Resort?
The Embassy Suites at Scottsdale Road and Chaparral looks like a standard Hilton suite hotel, and in most ways it is. It just has a better backstory than almost anything else on the road. In April 1953, an Iowa accountant named Ray Silverman bought the newly finished Paradise Valley Guest Ranch on this corner: twelve suites on five acres. His family ran the property through four names and more than sixty years, until 2015.
Along the way they tore down the ranch and built one of the country’s first all-suite hotels. They flew the Embassy Suites flag from 1984 to 1999, then ran it independently as Chaparral Suites. In 2015 they sold to Snyder Nationwide Real Estate. After a renovation of about $25 million, it reopened in July 2016 as Embassy Suites by Hilton Scottsdale Resort.
What you get today: 312 two-room suites on 15 acres, each with a separate living room and bedroom; a free cooked-to-order breakfast; the brand’s evening reception; two pools; a tennis court; and more than 60,000 square feet of meeting space. Who’s it for? Families, who get a door between the kids and the adults; youth sports teams; conference groups; and anyone who does the math on breakfast and happy hour for four people. Who should skip it? Couples looking for romance or design. This is a well-run, practical suite hotel next door to Hotel Adeline, not a hideaway.
How to do Embassy Suites Scottsdale right
Use the two rooms. The separate living room with its sofa bed is the whole point. Put the kids out there, close the door, and everyone sleeps. For a family of four that usually beats booking two rooms anywhere nearby.
Let breakfast and the reception do their job. The cooked-to-order breakfast is included every morning, and so is the evening reception with drinks and snacks. Over a week that adds up to real money, and it means one less dinner decision.
Get your money’s worth from the destination fee. It has covered self-parking, Wi-Fi, beach-cruiser bikes, courtyard games, tennis equipment and a resort shuttle running within about three miles in the daytime. That radius reaches Fashion Square and much of Old Town, so ask the front desk how it works before you call a rideshare.
Pick a pool. There are two, the Agave and the Cholla, each with a whirlpool. When one is crowded with a team or a conference break, try the other.
Eat on the strip. The hotel’s restaurant is AZUL Kitchen. Walk a few minutes and you’re at Postino Highland, Roaring Fork and The Scott’s Canal Club. Next door, the Adeline’s phone-booth speakeasy Straight Up is the grown-ups’ nightcap. In March, Scottsdale Stadium is about a mile and a half south.
From guest ranch to all-suite hotel: sixty years of one family’s corner
In 1953 “Paradise Valley” meant the whole open desert north of Scottsdale. The Town of Paradise Valley didn’t incorporate until 1961, and Scottsdale itself was a small town that had incorporated only two years earlier. The Paradise Valley Guest Ranch was the kind of place the area was known for: a dozen suites, a few acres, and visitors who came for the February and March season. Ray Silverman bought it in April 1953. By the late 1950s it had grown to 24 suites, and later to 37 units on 20 acres. His son Tom started out working the switchboard at age ten.
The family’s big move came at the turn of the 1980s. They tore down the ranch and built a 211-suite Granada Royale Hometel, the first one built from scratch for that chain. Granada Royale sold a new idea: a living room and a bedroom for about the price of a regular hotel room. In 1984 the new Embassy Suites brand took over Granada Royale, and the Silvermans’ hotel became the Scottsdale Embassy Suites. A year later they added 100 more suites, bringing it to roughly 311.
When the franchise ran out in 1999, the family went independent as Chaparral Suites, renovated and added a convention center. By 2003 Ray was still president, Tom was general manager and his sister Carole ran food and beverage. A grandson, Michael, was being groomed as the third generation. That kind of family operation was rare among the corridor’s big hotels, which mostly ended up in the hands of chains and investors.
The family sold in 2015 to Snyder Nationwide Real Estate, led by Paradise Valley’s Mark Snyder, for about $34 million. In 2016 the hotel went back under the Embassy Suites name it had carried in the 1980s and 1990s. This time the job was to modernize the rooms, the pools and the meeting spaces for the group-travel market. Hospitality Ventures Management Group took over management in 2019.
The site’s neighbors tell the same story of the Scottsdale Road strip. The 1961 Executive House Arizonian, now The Scott, is just south. The Safari Hotel once stood a few blocks away. A 1960s motor hotel next door became Hotel Adeline. Few addresses on this road have been in lodging longer than the corner where a twelve-suite guest ranch opened in 1953.