What is Motel 6 Old Town Scottsdale?
Old Town is the part of Scottsdale where a hotel room is hardest to find cheaply. This Motel 6 at 68th Street and Camelback Road is the exception. It’s a two-story budget motel with about 122 rooms, a few minutes’ walk west of Scottsdale Fashion Square, with the galleries, Waterfront and bar district not far beyond.
It’s a basic stay, and that’s intentional. Rooms come with two doubles or a queen. There’s an outdoor pool, free Wi-Fi, a 24-hour desk, and one of the more generous pet policies in town: two pets of any size stay free. Parking costs extra. Local accounts, including our guide to the restaurant next door, date the motel to the mid-1960s and describe it as one of the chain’s first properties in Arizona. That makes it older than most of the city around it.
Next door, in the motel’s old restaurant space, is The Original Pancake House, where Ron Horton has served the Dutch Baby since 1988 to lines of locals who have never stayed at the motel.
Reviews are honest about the trade-offs. On Tripadvisor it lands in the middle of the Scottsdale pack, with many guests reporting small but clean rooms and friendly staff, and others reporting thin walls, road noise, musty smells and tired mattresses. It suits budget travelers, shoppers, road-trippers with dogs, and anyone who mainly needs a clean bed near Old Town. If the room itself is part of the trip, spend more elsewhere.
How to do Motel 6 Old Town Scottsdale right
Choose the room before you arrive. The most common complaint is noise, through the walls and from Camelback Road. Ask for an upper-floor room set back from the road, and pack earplugs either way. If you can, look over the room when you check in, and ask right away for a different one if something is wrong. Reviewers tend to describe the staff warmly, even when they complain about the room.
Eat breakfast next door. No motel breakfast is included, and you won’t miss it. The Original Pancake House shares the lot, and its apple pancake and Dutch Baby beat what most hotels serve. Weekend lines are real; weekday mornings are quick.
Use the location on foot. From here, walk to Fashion Square (it doubles as the city’s best air-conditioned walk in July), then continue into Old Town for dinner or ride the free trolley. The Waterfront and Soleri Bridge are a pleasant evening walk.
Budget for parking. The room rate is low, but parking carries a surcharge. Include it when comparing prices, especially against motels farther from the mall that park free.
Bring the dog. Two pets of any size, at no fee, is unusually generous for a central location. Don’t leave them alone in the room; that’s the rule.
Book early for spring training. In March, cheap rooms within walking distance of Old Town and spring training go first.
The $6 idea on Camelback Road
Motel 6 began in 1962 in Santa Barbara, California, where founders Paul Greene and William Becker built a chain around one proposition: a clean, basic room for six dollars a night. It was the most stripped-down version of the postwar motor lodge, without frills, designed for families crossing the West by car. Within a few years the chain had spread along the region’s highways and into its growing cities.
Scottsdale was a good fit. The town had incorporated in 1951 and was building its identity on winter tourism, and in 1961 Fashion Square opened at Scottsdale and Camelback. A few years later, in the mid-1960s, a Motel 6 went up a few blocks west at 68th Street, which local accounts describe as the brand’s first Arizona property, on a Camelback Road that was still a modest approach into a resort town. The restaurant space beside it went through tenants for two decades before Ron Horton opened The Original Pancake House there in 1988, continuing the old American pairing of a motel with a breakfast house next door.
Then the neighborhood changed around it. Fashion Square grew into the largest mall in the Southwest. The Waterfront towers rose along the canal in the 2000s. Old Town filled with boutique hotels and restaurants with long waits. The Valley Ho, a 1956 survivor, was restored to landmark status. Much of Scottsdale’s midcentury roadside lodging was torn down or turned into something more expensive.
This motel survived largely by staying what it always was. Today it’s one of the few places left where the motor-court economics of the early 1960s still work within walking distance of a luxury mall: a pool, a parking lot, a pet-friendly room, and pancakes next door. It isn’t charming, and the reviews don’t pretend otherwise. But it keeps Old Town affordable for road-trippers, students, shoppers and anyone else who couldn’t otherwise stay downtown, which is the purpose Greene and Becker had in mind.