What is Extended Stay America Scottsdale Old Town?
Old Town has plenty of hotels with good bars and few with stovetops. This Extended Stay America on Marshall Way is one of the latter. Every room is a roughly 300-square-foot non-smoking studio with a kitchen: a full-size refrigerator, a stovetop and a microwave. Parking is free, pets are accepted (a fee may apply), and there’s a grab-and-go breakfast, guest laundry and an outdoor pool.
The address is the surprise. You’re in the Main Street & Marshall Way Arts District, a block and a half south of the boutique Bespoke Inn, with contemporary galleries, the Thursday ArtWalk and Western Spirit, the city’s Smithsonian-affiliated Western museum, all within walking distance. Fifth Avenue’s shops and Old Town’s restaurants are a few minutes away. Few weekly-rate hotels anywhere are this close to a downtown arts district.
Reviews should keep expectations in check. Across major platforms it averages in the low-to-mid sixes out of ten. Guests consistently praise the location, the comfortable beds and the friendly staff. The recurring complaints are cleanliness and odor, with several reviewers saying their room smelled of smoke even though the building is non-smoking.
It suits traveling nurses and contractors, families in the middle of a move, spring-training visitors staying a week or more, and anyone who would rather cook than eat out three times a day. If you want housekeeping-heavy service, a pool scene or a polished lobby, look elsewhere in Old Town.
How to do Extended Stay America Old Town right
Check the room before you settle in. Odor is the most common complaint in reviews. If your studio smells of smoke or mustiness, ask for a different one right away, before you’ve unpacked. Staff get good marks, so a polite request usually gets a response.
Shop on day one. The kitchen is the main reason to stay here. Make a grocery run your first afternoon, cook breakfast and most dinners, and save restaurant money for the nights that count: Virtù up the street or Pizzeria Virtù on Main.
Park the car and leave it. Parking is free, and most of what you’ll want is walkable: the galleries outside, the Soleri Bridge and Waterfront to the north, Fifth Avenue’s shops, and Fashion Square for air-conditioned walking in July. The free trolley handles the rest of downtown.
Plan Thursday nights around ArtWalk. The Scottsdale ArtWalk runs on Marshall Way and Main Street every Thursday evening. Staying here puts it just outside the door, which matters to visitors who come specifically for the galleries.
Housekeeping is lighter than at a full-service hotel. Extended-stay brands typically clean less often than standard hotels, so ask at check-in what the schedule is for your stay and plan around it.
For long stays, compare. If you’re staying a month or more, also look at serviced apartments such as Sentral Old Town, which cost more but have more space.
Weekly-rate studios in the gallery district
Extended-stay hotels came out of a gap in the 1980s and 1990s lodging market. Business travelers on long assignments, families between houses, and workers on months-long projects didn’t fit nightly hotels or one-year leases. Extended Stay America, founded in 1995, was built for that market: simple studios with kitchens, weekly rates, and fewer services than a full hotel to keep prices down. It grew into one of the largest chains in its segment, and in 2021 private-equity firms Blackstone and Starwood Capital bought the company and took it private.
The Old Town location sits on a street with an unusual history. Marshall Way is named for Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, who wintered in Scottsdale from 1914. After the city incorporated in 1951 and tourism took off, the street changed from homes into a district of independent galleries and shops. The Thursday-night ArtWalk began there and on Main Street in 1975. In 2015 the city opened Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West at the district’s north end, on the site of the old Loloma Transit Station.
Putting a budget weekly-rate hotel among the galleries says something about Old Town. Downtown Scottsdale is pricier than ever, but it’s also a real place where people work: hospitals, offices, restaurants, galleries, and the seasonal tourism economy that runs from January to April. The guests a hotel like this is built for — traveling nurses on contract, relocating families, crews working in Scottsdale for a season — need what extended-stay brands offer: a kitchen, a parking space and a weekly rate in the middle of town.
The reviews show the drawbacks of that model. Lighter housekeeping and heavy turnover show up as wear, and the odor and cleanliness complaints follow from that. But the location is unusually good for the price, and on a mild evening you can walk out of your studio straight into one of the oldest ArtWalks in the country.