What is the Sonesta Select Scottsdale at Mayo Clinic Campus?
Most people book this hotel because of an appointment. Sonesta Select Scottsdale at Mayo Clinic Campus is a two-story, 124-room hotel at 13444 East Shea Boulevard, next to the Mayo Clinic Scottsdale campus at 13400. It opened in the late 1980s as the Courtyard Scottsdale at Mayo Clinic, built alongside the clinic that had opened in 1987, and it has served patients and their families ever since.
It changed flags in 2021, when its owner moved its Marriott hotels to Sonesta, and listings say a full renovation was completed in December 2023. The features that matter to its guests are a free weekday shuttle to the Mayo campus, a heated outdoor pool and whirlpool, a 24-hour gym, guest laundry, and an on-site restaurant, The Commons, for breakfast and evening small plates. Dogs and cats are welcome too, which helps when you can’t leave a pet behind for a week.
Expect a quiet, functional hotel. This end of Shea is the last stretch of the Shea Corridor before the McDowell Mountains. Old Town is a long drive west, and the evenings are quiet. That suits people waiting on test results, and it’s not what you want for a golf weekend.
If you’re in town for Mayo, this is an obvious choice. If you’re not, the hotels in Old Town, Kierland or the resort corridor will suit you better.
How to do a Mayo Clinic stay right
Confirm which campus you need. This matters more than anything else on the page. Mayo’s Scottsdale campus on Shea handles clinic visits, imaging, labs and research. Mayo Clinic Hospital, where surgery and inpatient care happen, is in north Phoenix, a separate drive across the Loop 101. A week of outpatient visits on Shea suits this hotel well. A hospital stay for a family member may mean you’d rather stay near the Phoenix campus.
Use the shuttle, and keep a car anyway. The free weekday shuttle saves you parking and stress on appointment days. For evenings, weekends and groceries you’ll still want a car, because nothing in this part of Scottsdale is walkable.
Eat in once, then go out. The Commons handles breakfast and an easy dinner after a long day. For a change, Over Easy on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard is a local breakfast favorite, and the Shea Corridor strip malls to the west hold some of the city’s best low-key restaurants, including Chompie’s and Sweet Republic.
Go outside. The east end of Shea is close to some of Scottsdale’s best desert. The Lost Dog Wash trailhead on 124th Street leads into the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, and Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert camp, is a short drive north. Either is a good use of a free afternoon between appointments.
Ask about the pet amenities. Two pets per room, no breed or weight limit, and a flat fee per stay make this one of the easier places near Mayo to stay with a dog.
A hotel that came with the clinic
When Mayo Clinic chose Arizona in 1985, the site it picked was 180 acres of raw desert on Shea Boulevard at Scottsdale’s far east edge. The city’s population was moving north and east, and the nearest hospital, Scottsdale Memorial’s new north campus at 92nd Street, was miles to the west. Mayo’s first chief executive, Richard Hill, said Arizona would be a full Mayo practice, not a satellite. When the clinic opened on June 29, 1987, it had 47 physicians and 1,800 appointments already booked.
Those patients came from all over the country, often for days of testing, and they needed somewhere to stay. In the late 1980s that was the job of Courtyard by Marriott, then a young brand designed for midweek business travelers. The two-story Courtyard opened on the Shea campus at the end of the decade, and for about three decades it was the default address for out-of-town Mayo patients and their families.
Mayo’s growth then moved elsewhere. In 1998 it opened its own hospital in north Phoenix, and nearly every major expansion since, including the $748 million project finished in 2024 and a $1.9 billion second phase announced in 2025, has gone there. The Shea campus kept its outpatient clinic and research buildings, along with steady demand for nearby rooms.
The hotel’s ownership changed more than its purpose. Its owner, Service Properties Trust, a Massachusetts real estate trust that owns a large share of the Sonesta hotel company, ended Marriott’s management agreements on 122 hotels in late 2020 after a dispute over payments. Most moved to Sonesta brands between December 2020 and January 2021. The Courtyard became Sonesta Select Scottsdale at Mayo Clinic Campus, and the TownePlace Suites farther west on Shea became Sonesta Simply Suites. Sonesta finished a full renovation in December 2023.
Scottsdale is known for resorts, golf and Old Town nightlife. This hotel serves a different group of visitors that the city’s tourism marketing rarely mentions: the people Mayo has brought to Shea Boulevard every year since 1987.