What is the Scottsdale Marriott Old Town?
A lot of locals still call it the Marriott Suites, and that old name explains it better than the new one. Every one of the 243 rooms at this Third Avenue hotel is a suite — a bedroom with a door, a separate living room with a sofa, a wet bar and refrigerator, and a balcony. It’s a full-service Marriott, with a restaurant (the 3rd Avenue Grill), a bar, a heated pool with cabanas and real meeting space, set in the middle of Old Town instead of out on a resort corridor.
The location is what you’re paying for. The hotel sits a block south of Indian School Road and just east of Scottsdale Road, so the Civic Center lawn, the Main Street and Marshall Way galleries, the Fifth Avenue shops and the bars of the Entertainment District are all on foot. Hotels this close in are mostly boutique rooms built for two people and a weekend. This one is built for people staying longer, or sharing.
Who it suits: business travelers who need to work in the room, families who need the kids asleep behind a door by eight, and anyone in town for a week of spring training who wants to walk to the ballpark. Who should look elsewhere: travelers who want a resort pool scene, a spa or golf (go up Scottsdale Road), and anyone bringing a dog, because Marriott lists this hotel as not pet-friendly.
It isn’t a design destination or a nightlife hotel. It’s a well-located, practical Marriott with more square footage than its neighbors.
How to do the Scottsdale Marriott Old Town right
Pick it for the second room. A standard suite here gives you a living room you can close off. If one of you goes to bed early, works late, or snores, that door is worth more than a rooftop bar. For longer stays the wet bar and refrigerator mean breakfast in the room and a cold drink after a day outside.
Ask for the view side. Higher floors facing north or west catch Camelback Mountain over Old Town’s low rooftops. The view isn’t guaranteed, but asking at check-in costs nothing.
Park once. Self-parking is paid, so the smart move is to arrive, park, and walk. The Civic Center and its sculpture lawn are a few minutes east, the galleries and Old Town walking routes are a few minutes west, and the Scottsdale Waterfront and Fashion Square are about fifteen minutes north on foot. Rideshare covers the rest.
Plan around March. Scottsdale Stadium, the Giants’ spring home, is an easy walk south down Drinkwater, which makes this a natural spring-training base. It also means March is the hardest month to book here, along with the weeks of Barrett-Jackson and the WM Phoenix Open. Reserve early.
Treat the pool as a pool. It’s a heated, palm-lined hotel pool with cabanas: good for an afternoon swim, not a party. For a scene, walk to the W or the Valley Ho for a drink, then come back to a quiet room.
The suite hotel comes downtown
The block this hotel stands on tells the story of how downtown Scottsdale changed from a farm town’s main street into a hotel district. When Scottsdale incorporated in 1951, the land south of Indian School Road was a loose grid of houses, shops and lots, and the town’s visitor beds were out on the edges: the guest ranches, the Camelback Inn, and the motor courts along Scottsdale Road. Downtown had stores, not hotels, with one great exception in the Valley Ho.
The city reorganized the area in the 1960s. The Civic Center opened in 1968 between Scottsdale Road and the new Drinkwater Boulevard, and the one-way pair of Goldwater and Drinkwater later pushed traffic around the core. That left a few blocks of developable land, close to the new government buildings and the galleries, that suited something Scottsdale hadn’t had much of: a mid-rise hotel aimed at business travelers and longer stays rather than winter vacationers.
The all-suite hotel was one of the defining hotel ideas of the 1980s. Embassy Suites had shown that travelers would pay for a separate living room, and Marriott answered with its own suites brand. Travel-industry listings date this property to 1988, which puts it in the decade when Scottsdale’s hotel market was growing up: resorts like the Registry and the Hyatt at Gainey Ranch drew conventions, and corporate travel began filling rooms in the off-season. A full-service suite hotel a short walk from City Hall and the galleries suited a downtown that was starting to work year-round.
For decades it ran as the Scottsdale Marriott Suites Old Town. As Marriott tidied its brand names, the “Suites” dropped out, but the building and the room plan stayed the same. The neighborhood around it changed: the Waterfront towers went up along the canal, the W Scottsdale opened in 2008 and gave the Entertainment District a hotel of its own, and a wave of select-service and boutique hotels followed, from the Courtyard by the stadium to the rooftop-pool towers of the 2020s.
What the Marriott says about Scottsdale is quieter than what the resorts say. It shows the city’s center becoming a place people stay, not just pass through on the way to the corridor. The suites, the meeting rooms and the walkable address made sense in 1988, and they still do.