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We have reviewed hotels in Phoenix and Scottsdale in Arizona with the best club or executive lounges. Whether you are traveling as a couple, a family, or as a single business traveler, by reviewing each of these club lounges, in turn, I conclude which hotel club lounge comes in at the top and which hotel you should pick for the best club lounge in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Scottsdale is a desert city in Arizona, east of the state capital Phoenix. It houses many of the region’s luxury resorts and is known for its spa resorts and golf courses, including TPC Scottsdale. If you want to stay in luxury in Phoenix or Scottsdale in Arizona, you should stay at one of Scottsdale’s luxury hotels, which include Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North, Andaz Scottsdale Resort & Bungalows, The Canyon Suites at The Phoenician, a Luxury Collection Resort, Fairmont Scottsdale Princess (which has a club lounge), Royal Palms Resort and Spa, Phoenix and Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain Resort & Spa. There are also JW Marriott, Sheraton, and other Bonvoy properties in Scottsdale, Arizona.
I have compiled a list below containing the club lounges available across luxury hotels in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona. I list the lounges that I consider to be the best of the best. I will be reviewing each of these hotel club lounges in detail in turn so that you know what you’ll get if you book a room with club lounge access or get upgraded to a club lounge for free because of your loyalty status.
1. Fairmont Scottsdale Princess
The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess is a Five Diamond gem set amidst the bright-green cottonwoods and Arizona’s majestic purple mountains. It offers the best club lounge in Scottsdale, along with a highly acclaimed Well & Being Spa with a rooftop swimming pool and private cabanas. Four signature restaurants vie for your attention, including BOURBON Steak, masterminded by Chef Michael Mina, and La Hacienda by Richard Sandoval, Toro Latin Restaurant, and Rum Bar at TPC Scottsdale.
There are 5 pool areas (one includes a mini-water park with zero-entry and dual water slides ), and at night at the main pool, they have “dive in” movies (drive-in size movie screen poolside and everyone on floats in the water). There are two golf courses (one used for PGA). There is horseback riding along with other activity options. The resort’s grounds are very well-maintained and pretty, with lots of cacti, ponds, and streams.
Visit between Thanksgiving and New Year’s for the best Christmas display in Scottsdale. There’s an ice skating rink, a train ride, an animated light show, and, of course, Santa!
Serving as a hotel-within-the-hotel, Fairmont Gold at Fairmont Scottsdale Princess is an exclusive club level experience with 69 guest rooms and suites having access to the Gold-member lounge, meeting center and more. The Gold rooms are larger and better appointed than standard rooms. The bed is semi-separate from a small living room, and both rooms have flat-screen televisions. All rooms are spacious, even the regular rooms. Pick a King Casita Room if you don’t want club lounge access but want a sitting area with a fireplace along with a huge bathroom.
Upon arrival, Gold club level guests are immediately welcomed to an exclusive separate reception desk with a “taste of Arizona” welcome drink in hand. The private concierge will print your boarding passes, arrange shuttle transport to nearby shopping areas, and personally help you discover the best local hikes, attractions, concerts, museums, and so much more.
Fairmont Gold Amenities include private check-in and check-out, complimentary deluxe continental breakfast and evening canapés, complimentary filtered and locally sourced water in your guestroom, complimentary self-parking, complimentary pressing of two garments of your choice, personalized wake-up call with a choice of a hot beverage or juice delivered to your guestroom within 10 minutes of your wake-up call and complimentary access to Well & Being Spa (otherwise around $50 USD per day).
The Spa includes a private rooftop pool with nice views, a steam room, sauna, Jacuzzi, cold plunge pool, Swiss shower, and an ‘inhalation room’ in both the separated men’s and women’s areas. The ‘grotto waterfall’ is a highlight. You can sit under a 10-foot waterfall with water streams of various strengths. Be sure to book any treatments ahead as they sell out!
The complimentary deluxe continental breakfast included in the club lounge offers a nice spread with hot and cold options and includes wonderful Eggs Benedict. Complimentary evening canapes and desserts are offered daily, and an honor bar is also available. Complimentary non-alcoholic refreshments, as well as an espresso/cappuccino machine and snacks, are all offered in the lounge throughout the day.
The honor bar is basically a self-serve drinks bar offering a limited selection of spirits, wine, and beers for a fee. Interestingly, the JW Marriott outlined below does not offer an honor bar. Their drinks are free during happy hour, much like European club lounges, but no kids are allowed in this lounge as a consequence. There is an indoor/outdoor seating area in the lounge, which is particularly nice, and the evening hor d’ouvres are very good and go nicely with the honor drinks.
2. Arizona Biltmore, A Waldorf Astoria Resort
The Arizona Biltmore is centrally located in Phoenix, Scottsdale, just 15 minutes north of Sky Harbor International Airport. Drive up to the breathtaking entrance, and you will see the mountains of Scottsdale in the background as you pass golf courses, beautiful homes landscaped in the Phoenix style of royal palms, and bougainvillea.
The Arizona Biltmore, A Waldorf Astoria Resort, has been an Arizona landmark since opening in 1929. It remains one of the world’s best resorts for its Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired architecture, luxurious facilities, and deep history. This historic hotel remains a playground for celebrities, worldly dignitaries, and U.S. Presidents.
There are five dining options: the award-winning Spa Biltmore, a full-service salon, eight pools, six tennis courts, two championship golf courses, a Fitness Center, lawn games, outdoor activities, and various hiking trails nearby. In the prestigious Biltmore community, the resort sits near the base of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, providing views that are nothing short of breathtaking. Experience legendary moments through timeless luxury first-hand when you visit the Arizona Biltmore, A Waldorf Astoria Resort.
While there isn’t a free executive lounge for Diamond Marriott Bonvoy members, if you book an Octilla room, you get club lounge access but bear in mind that this lounge is for everyone booking in the Octilla rooms. These rooms are in the newest wing of the hotel. You get a private pool area, free water, and soft drinks all day, plus a private concierge. You also get a free continental breakfast, afternoon snacks, appetizers, and late-night dessert, plus free beer, wine, and cocktails throughout the evening. There is also a very nice outdoor seating area that you can enjoy as part of this lounge, making it extra special and well worth paying extra for.
3. JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa
The award-winning 4-Diamond JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa offers an on-site spa, championship golf at Wildfire Golf Club, five pools, a lazy river, and exquisite dining. Gracefully designed rooms and suites include deluxe bedding, modern technology, and floor-to-ceiling windows; many feature views of the mountains, golf club, or resort pools.
Invigorate your mind and body at Revive Spa, or perfect your swing on one of two immaculate golf courses designed by Arnold Palmer and Nick Faldo. Feast on American cuisine, Asian specialties, or steak – or enjoy a poolside cocktail or local beer. If you’d like to explore beyond the hotel, Cave Creek Desert Ridge Marketplace, and more are close by.
Highlights at this JW Marriott hotel include the pool area, which is huge and has a lazy river, along with several different pools and zones. Some areas are quiet and peaceful. Other areas attract kids. Wherever you sit, you can expect to be pampered with excellent poolside service catering to all your needs.
The other highlight of this JW Marriott is the Griffon Club, which is this JW Marriott’s club lounge. The JW Griffin Club offers a much more personal service than the overall resort which is big and slightly impersonal. It is not a cathedral of style, it has a classic Marriott look, but the food and drink are excellent here.
The Griffin Club has newspapers and magazines, computers, and printers. It’s actually more like a European and Asian club lounge in terms of quality and selection of food and drink and includes complimentary alcohol, wine, beer, spirits, and cocktails! The food is comparable to that at the Fairmont above, but the fact that you can also enjoy free happy hour alcohol here may just swing your decision into choosing this JW Marriott as your hotel with the best club lounge in Scottsdale.
One thing to note is that children under 21 are allowed into this club lounge, so if you are traveling with your family, this is not the hotel to choose from. If you are traveling as a couple, the fact that there are no kids in this lounge may be an advantage for you.
In the morning, you get a continental breakfast along with eggs like an omelet made to order, complete with all the additions, cheese, mushrooms, spinach, meats, onions, or anything else you can think of. The fruit bowls are extensive and joyous and include berries as well as your standard fruits, and the juices include fresh strawberry juice.
Unusually for a Marriott club lounge, there’s also a full lunch offered with mains like butternut squash soup with pistachio garnish, prawn wraps, cold meats, grilled vegetables, cheese, and delicious salads. During the day, you are also kept full of fruit, cookies, and snacks, along with espressos, coffee, tea, sodas, and juice.
Happy hour is long, from late afternoon to late evening. There is local craft beer, including the Twenty6 beer, made just for the resort (which is the 26th JW Marriott), using honey grown on-site along with wines and top-shelf alcohol. Hor d’ouvres are also served with the chef cooking some of the dishes in front of you. Dishes include steak and risotto along with pasta, varying each night.
With your Griffin Club fee, you also get access to the Revive Spa, which usually costs $35 USD and includes indoor and outdoor Jacuzzis, a quiet pool, steam rooms, and saunas. The lounge chairs at the spa pool are a great place to relax and are nicer than those at the ‘regular’ pools (they have nice padding). The spa also has its own nicer fitness center and fitness classes that are also included with a JW Griffin Club membership.
Overall, the Griffin club is well worth paying the extra to upgrade. Do remember, there is also a resort fee at this JW Marriott hotel of $39.40 USD per room, per night.
Also worth noting, there is NO club lounge at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort & Spa.
Book either JW Marriott in Scottsdale, Arizona, or elsewhere via our luxury travel concierge to get free perks and benefits along with your usual Marriott Bonvoy points at no extra cost.
4. Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Gainey Ranch
Set amidst flowering cactus, breathtaking sunsets, and framed against the majestic McDowell Mountains, Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort and Spa features a 2 1/2-acre “water playground”, 27 holes of championship golf, world-class tennis, Spa, the Native American Learning and Environmental Center, an international art collection and four distinctively different restaurants.
This is a fantastic Hyatt resort. The pool areas are gorgeous. Rooms are large, clean, and well-appointed, with a lovely balcony to sit out on.
A highlight for most guests is sitting out in the courtyard or having dinner with all the floor-to-ceiling windows open and listening to live music as the sun goes down. Alto restaurant is also a great experience, with a boat ride afterward.
The Regency Club lounge is beautiful, too, and you can sit outside next to the pond, but you can’t leave your table to get more food, or the birds descend on your plate and carry off your food. Platinum World Of Hyatt members are charged $100 USD to upgrade to the lounge. The only problem is that there isn’t enough food here to cater to all the guests. Breakfast is served until 10:00 am, but when the eggs and oatmeal bowls run out, no effort is made to replace the food. The same goes for the juices. There is a good chicken pasta salad in the evening, but the serving bowl is tiny and surrounded by larger vats of cheaper foods like carrot sticks, hummus, etc. This really is “light”. Don’t expect to fill up here, and the lounge is probably not worth the additional fee as a result, which is a shame, as this is otherwise a superb resort.
5. The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa
While not as luxurious as the hotels outlined above, the Westin Kierland Resort is roughly a half-hour drive from Phoenix Airport (PHX), which means it is a busy hotel.
If you have platinum Marriott Bonvoy status, you get free access to the 9th-floor lounge, which is small, basic, and a little dated. The hotel waives the $29 USD nightly resort fee for Platinum members (the Platinum check-in amenity is the choice of points or branded Westin Kierland Resort water bottles), but if you are not a Platinum member, bear the resort fee in mind when pricing your hotel stay up.
The Deluxe King room here is fairly basic, and the hotel feels like a factory because it is such a large resort. On the plus side, there are plenty of facilities, including a spa, a restaurant, golfing greens, a business center, luxurious pools, a waterpark/slide, and a fitness center.
Platinum Bonvoy members and those who pay to upgrade to the club lounge get a free continental breakfast in the lounge and can order hot food for an additional charge. There are no hot eggs or sides (sausages, bacon, etc.), only a hot pancake machine to warm your meal up. Afternoon hor d’ouvres are basically a charcuterie tray with meats, cheese, crackers, and fruit. Platinum Bonvoy members are offered a $25 USD coupon for evening drinks/snacks in Deseo Bar rather than being offered evening snacks and drinks in the lounge.
The Sheraton Desert Oasis is just around the corner from The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa and is a very family-friendly hotel with a pool. Expect lots of kids but no club lounge. Crucially, this hotel can be a cheaper option for families in almost the same location.
6. Talking Stick Resort, Scottsdale
Reserve a Club King or Club Queen room at Talking Stick Resort, Scottsdale, to enjoy the tower club lounge, an exclusive lounge for Tower Club Level Rooms.
The exclusive 2,000 ft² Tower Club™ Lounge is located on the hotel’s club level and offers complimentary breakfast, cocktails, flat-screen TVs, and an on-site concierge. Access is limited to guests staying in Club King and Club Queen rooms.
They say: “The lounge offers a comfortable environment to relax and unwind with sleek decor, contemporary furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows featuring inspiring views of the surrounding mountains.” In fact, the views are also of the pool and golf courses, so this is a fun place to spend the day.”
A complimentary breakfast is available, and hor d’ouvres, beer, wine, and champagne are served daily. Plus, there is a selection of books and magazines in the lounge’s library. Alternatively, you can watch shows on a 42-inch LCD flat-screen television. The on-site concierge will assist with spa, dining, or golf reservations and print out a boarding pass before a flight.
Of note, this hotel is about 20 miles from the Phoenix airport but takes almost an hour in the morning traffic, so bear this in mind when planning your transfer to the airport.
7. Sheraton Crescent
The Sheraton Crescent is located north of downtown Phoenix and just minutes away from Glendale, Arizona, near the freeway and minutes from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. It also has relatively newly remodeled rooms and a fair-to-middling club lounge. If you are a Platinum Marriott Bonvoy member, you have a good chance to get upgraded to a club room. They have central air conditioning that is very quiet but no free shuttle to the airport.
8. Sheraton Phoenix Airport Hotel Tempe
The Sheraton Tempe is a few miles away from the airport, but it has a free shuttle bus, making access to this hotel from the airport easy. The rooms are good, but the air conditioning is in wall units, which can be very loud, depending on the room you are assigned. The bathrooms are also a bit small.
This Sheraton has a small lounge with a decent selection of hot and cold foods in the evening, along with free non-alcoholic drinks and alcoholic beverages for a fee. There is not much noteworthy about this lounge, although it does have two TVs and one desktop computer. It is certainly not worth going out of your way for this club lounge.
The club lounge offers the usual hor d’ouvres at night and hot and cold breakfast items in the morning, which is a big plus, as hot items help to start the day off nicely. On the downside, there are no other restaurant options within close walking distance.
Another Sheraton option is Four Points Phoenix South, but this does not have a club lounge and is more basic, or the Aloft Tempe, but there is no club lounge here either.
9. Sheraton Grand Phoenix
Sheraton Grand Phoenix is located in downtown Phoenix. This is also the city’s largest hotel offering good, clean accommodations, all featuring luxurious Sheraton bedding and a prime location near the Phoenix Convention Center. Talking Stick Resort Arena, Arizona State University, the Encanto Historic District, and Chase Field are all close.
Stop by District American Kitchen & Wine Bar for all-day dining, or visit Breeze Bar, located on our pool terrace, to soak in the sunshine and views of downtown Phoenix. This hotel is one of downtown Phoenix’s premier convention hotels, which means it is a better hotel for business than for bringing your family on vacation. Still, it does have a club lounge with decent appetizers and excellent staff.
9. Hilton Phoenix Airport
Hilton Phoenix Airport is a clean hotel close to the airport and ideal for Hilton Honours members to earn and redeem points. The hotel is, in fact, just 1.5 miles from the airport and offers a 24-hour airport shuttle, grab-and-go snacks and late-night menus, and Hertz rental car pickup/return. While you stay, treat yourself to a swim in their heated outdoor pool set amid lush palm trees or upgrade to their club lounge.
Book an Executive King-level room to get lounge access included. Located on the top floor, these recently renovated executive-level king rooms are decorated in rich colors and offer a 37-inch TV, work desk, and mini-refrigerator. Executive lounge guests enjoy a complimentary hot breakfast buffet daily, nightly hor d’ouvres, and discounted cocktails, plus access to non-alcoholic drinks and snacks throughout the day. The executive lounge is only open on weekdays and also features two flat-screen TVs, complimentary workstations, and an outdoor patio overlooking the pool.
10. Sheraton Mesa Hotel
Sheraton Mesa Hotel at Wrigleyville West is around a 15-minute drive from PHX airport and is a fairly new hotel with a surprisingly spacious 24-hour lounge. Prices here are generally lower than other Phoenix-area SPG Sheraton hotels.
The food offerings here are basic and not of great quality. Breakfast includes warm scrambled eggs, bagels, bread for toast, boxed cereal, instant oatmeal, fruit, and processed (not fresh) muffins and pastries. The evening service is veggie trays and a hot dish. All-day snacks are bagged crisps, granola bars, and bananas.
If you’re young (or young at heart) and enjoy the nightlife, the W might be worth considering as it’s right in Scottsdale rather than being isolated in a resort compound, plus it’s close to the airport.
There are also a number of other hotels in Scottsdale, like the Residence Inn, Courtyard, TownePlace Suites, and Fairfield Inn. There are also Country Inn and Suites, Sierra Suites, LaQuinta Inn and Suites, Embassy Suites, etc., but these are not, by any stretch of the imagination, luxury hotels, so they are not detailed in this article.
11. Ritz-Carlton Paradise Valley
Opening in 2020 is the Ritz-Carlton Paradise Valley, Arizona, set on 20 acres overlooking Camelback Mountain, offering a luxury experience inspired by its surroundings. Restaurants will feature produce sourced from the resort’s citrus orchard and garden. The spa offers desert-inspired treatments and accommodations that reflect the style of traditional casitas. With a breathtaking natural setting and 20,000 ft² of event space, the resort is ideal for weddings and meetings, and we expect it to have one of the best club lounges in Arizona, too.
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