What is Royal Palms Resort and Spa?
Royal Palms began as a house. In 1929 Delos Willard Cooke, a New York financier, and his wife Florence finished a Spanish Revival winter estate on the empty citrus land below Camelback Mountain. They called it El Vernadero, planted it with palms, and built it around a courtyard with a Moorish-style reflecting pool and arches set with tile. Cooke died in 1931, and the house changed hands several times before opening as the Royal Palms Inn on February 1, 1948.
It has been a hotel ever since, and it has never lost the feeling of a private estate. There are 119 rooms across nine acres, most of them casitas, plus suites and six villas with fireplaces and private patios, all connected by paths, courtyards and fountains. T. Cook’s is the signature restaurant, and the Alvadora Spa sits off the gardens. Hyatt runs it as part of The Unbound Collection, its group of one-of-a-kind hotels, and it is a member of Historic Hotels of America.
The Royal Palms is in Phoenix, on Camelback Road at 52nd Street, about two miles west of Scottsdale Fashion Square. Like its neighbors on the Camelback Corridor, it works as a Scottsdale stay all the same.
It suits couples, anniversary trips, small weddings and anyone who’d take tile and old palms over a waterslide. It doesn’t suit families who want a big pool scene, or travelers who need to walk to restaurants and bars. For that, try Old Town.
How to do the Royal Palms right
Pick the room for the season. In winter, ask for a casita or villa with a fireplace. Desert nights in January are cold enough to use it. In summer, ask for a room close to the pool, and look for the low rates the whole Camelback Corridor offers from June through September.
See the old house. The 1929 mansion is the center of the resort, with its courtyard, reflecting pool and tiled arches. Take a slow walk through it in daylight, then come back in the evening, when the courtyards are at their quietest.
Eat at T. Cook’s at least once. The Mediterranean menu has been the resort’s centerpiece since the 1997 reopening, and the dining room is one of the most romantic in the Valley. Brunch on a cool morning is the easy introduction. For a drink, there’s the Mix Up bar; by the pool, the Cabana Cafe.
Book the spa ahead. The Alvadora Spa is small, with eight treatment rooms, and fills up on winter weekends.
Plan for the car and the costs. Parking is valet only, and there’s a nightly resort fee. Pets are welcome for a fee plus a deposit. Breakfast isn’t included.
Hike early. The Camelback Mountain trailheads are minutes away but have small lots that fill before sunrise on cool-season weekends. Go on a weekday or go very early, and come back for a long breakfast.
Pair it with its siblings. For a full day of corridor history, add the Hermosa Inn, restored by the same couple who saved the Royal Palms, and the Jokake Inn bell towers on the Phoenician’s lawn, which once belonged to the same longtime owner.
From winter estate to resort, and the owners who kept it
The Cooke estate belongs to the same moment as the Jokake Inn, which began as a tearoom about a mile east in 1926. Both catered to wealthy easterners, one in adobe and the other in Spanish Revival style, and both were set against Camelback Mountain. The difference is that the Royal Palms started as one family’s house. In 1937 Florence Cooke sold it to Wesley “Buck” Travis, president of Pacific Greyhound, who added a second story and a small chapel. After a radio executive’s turn, former bandleader Al Stovall and two partners bought it in 1947 to make it an inn.
The Royal Palms Inn opened in 1948 with 15 casitas, horses, tennis and a heart-shaped pool lined with Delft tile. Barney Leonard bought it in 1951 and added 35 casitas. Fred Renker, a former tennis player, took over in 1956 and brought in Hollywood: Groucho Marx, Buster Keaton, Eva Gabor and Walter Pidgeon all came. Henry Haller, who cooked here in 1953 and 1954, later spent about two decades as White House executive chef, from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan.
The longest chapter belongs to Charles Alberding, the Chicago hotel collector who also kept the Jokake Inn running. He bought the Royal Palms in 1959 for about $1 million, turned a citrus grove into a nine-hole golf course, and in 1981 added a two-story building that brought the room count to 120. Pat Ryan, one of the few women running a resort in that era, managed it for 22 years. Alberding died in 1989, and his family carried on until the mid-1990s, when they sold the golf course to a homebuilder and the hotel to Fred and Jennifer Unger.
The Ungers had just restored the Hermosa Inn, and they did the same here. They closed the Royal Palms in 1996, stripped it back toward its 1930s Mediterranean character, and reopened it in 1997 with T. Cook’s. They sold it to Destination Hotels & Resorts in 1998; the Alvadora Spa followed in 2002 and the current name in 2003.
The modern ownership story runs through Scottsdale. Hyatt bought the resort in 2016 for $88.25 million, then in 2017 sold it to Xenia Hotels & Resorts, along with the Hyatt Regency at Gainey Ranch, now the Grand Hyatt Scottsdale. Xenia still owns it and Hyatt still runs it. Of all the estate-era resorts under Camelback, the Royal Palms is the one where you can still sleep in the original house’s world: the Jokake survives as two towers, and the Ingleside not at all.