What is the Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix/Scottsdale?
The Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix/Scottsdale is a 1998 Hilton hotel with 123 rooms and suites in two three-story buildings on Scottsdale Road, a few hundred yards south of Bell Road. It’s a Hampton, and it does what Hamptons do: free breakfast, free Wi-Fi, an outdoor pool, a small gym and a guest laundry. Two extras matter in this neighborhood: free self-parking, which several neighbors charge for, and a noon checkout.
The name is honest about the address. The hotel is on the west side of Scottsdale Road, the city line along this stretch, so it’s in Phoenix with a Scottsdale mailing address. The same is true of the Sleep Inn next door and the Courtyard and SpringHill Suites up the block.
Don’t confuse it with the Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix/Scottsdale on Shea Boulevard, a different hotel about 4 miles south. The names are easy to mix up.
The location is handy. Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter are about a mile south, the Scottsdale Promenade is across Scottsdale Road, the Airpark is about 2 miles east, and Mayo Clinic Hospital is about 4 miles northwest.
Who is it for? Budget-minded families, travelers with dogs, Airpark and medical visitors, and anyone renting a car who doesn’t want to pay to park it. Who should look elsewhere: travelers after a resort pool, a restaurant in the building or a walkable evening.
How to do the Hampton Inn & Suites right
Use the noon checkout. The Marriott hotels up the block want you out by 11 a.m. Here you can fit in a morning hike or a last swim before you leave.
Make the free parking count. Without a parking fee, this is a good base for a driving trip. WestWorld and TPC Scottsdale are a few miles east along Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, and Kierland is five minutes south.
Bring the dog. Dogs and cats up to 75 pounds are welcome for a per-stay fee, which is rarer than it should be around here. The Sleep Inn next door doesn’t take pets.
Eat out, close by. There’s no restaurant on site. The Capital Grille and Picazzo’s are across Scottsdale Road at the Promenade, and Kierland’s restaurant row (North Italia, The Mission, Zinc Bistro) is a mile south. The hotel’s barbecue grills are there for a cheap dinner in.
Check which building you’re in. The rooms are spread across two three-story buildings, so ask for one close to the lobby and breakfast if you’re traveling with small children or a lot of luggage.
Book big weeks early. January’s Barrett-Jackson, February’s WM Phoenix Open and March’s spring training fill every free-breakfast hotel in north Scottsdale. The Hampton’s small meeting room, under 2,000 square feet, can also handle a team breakfast or a small training session.
The 1998 wave at Scottsdale and Bell
When the Hampton opened in 1998, the corner of Scottsdale Road and Bell Road was changing fast. To the east, inside Scottsdale, Bell Road’s new continuation, Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, had been dedicated at Taliesin West in 1994. To the southeast, the Airpark, the business district that had grown around Scottsdale Airport since the city bought the old Thunderbird Field II runway in 1966, was filling up with offices. To the south and west, the Herberger family’s 730 acres were becoming Kierland: Phoenix had approved the master plan in 1991, and the Kierland Golf Club had opened in 1996.
That combination drew a set of mid-priced, select-service hotels to the Phoenix side of the corner during the 1990s: this Hampton, the Sleep Inn next door, and the Courtyard and SpringHill Suites at Bell. They were built for weekday business travelers, with breakfast rooms instead of restaurants and parking lots instead of lobbies. The district they were betting on arrived soon after: Kierland Commons in 2000, the Westin Kierland in 2002, the Residence Inn across the road the same year, and the Loop 101 around the turn of the millennium.
The same year the Hampton opened, Mayo Clinic Hospital opened about 4 miles northwest, on September 12, 1998, the first hospital Mayo designed and built itself. Over the following decades Mayo moved most of its Arizona growth to that north Phoenix campus, and hotels along this stretch of Scottsdale Road gained a steady flow of patients and families. When those hotels say “near Mayo Clinic,” they mean that hospital, not the 1987 clinic on Shea Boulevard.
The Hampton’s name records the city line, and its guests reflect the neighborhood’s mix: Airpark contractors on Tuesday, car collectors in January, golf fans in February, and families visiting a patient at any time of year. More than 25 years on, the hotel still offers what it did in 1998: free breakfast, free parking and a location close to almost everything in north Scottsdale.