Niche hotels spice up Scottsdale’s image
October 19, 2007 – 10:50 am
Scottsdale, long renowned for its luxury golf and spa resorts, havens for rich — and aging — baby boomers, is becoming suddenly hip.
Scottsdale ranks low in ‘hip’ spots
A handful of minimalist boutique hotels, modeled after the famed W brand, have sprouted in the city’s chic downtown district.
The boutique boom is changing Scottsdale’s tourism image. And its clientele.
Are the new urban inns muscling out the traditional resorts and their traditional visitors?
It will help round out the offerings in Scottsdale. Communities can get pigeon-holed if they don’t change with the times.”
The sprawling destination resorts — the Hyatt, the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, The Phoenician, Westin Kierland, and the like — provide a place where visitors can come to be pampered, entertained, wined and dined, and never leave the property till it’s time to board a plane for home.
The boutique hotels are small and sandwiched into a busy, crowded commercial downtown area.
The new-style properties are compact, lacking such amenities as golf courses, tennis courts and a multitude of swimming pools and restaurants.
The new urban hotels — the Hollywood-fave Mondrian, yuppie hangout Valley Ho and the coming-soon W, the undisputed national niche leader — are attracting the Gen-X and Gen-Y travelers.
Uninterested in the more serene and relaxing resort scene, the 20- and 30-something urbanites previously stayed away from the desert city.
But hip hoteliers such as New York-based Morgan Hotel Group, parent of Mondrian, and San Francisco-based Kimpton, which transformed an old-style hotel into the trendy FireSky, are causing the yuppie travelers to notice Scottsdale.
“They are bringing a whole new demographic to Scottsdale,”
“They are younger, urban and looking for a different experience.”
The new crowd is just as affluent as the resort-goers and they are more likely to leave the hotel property for entertainment.
They are attracted to a vibrant night life, adventurous day-time activities and occasionally a golf outing or a pampering spa treatment.
“We get people from all walks of life, but our No. 1 customer is the young, in the 30s, business traveler,” said Jesse Thompson, marketing director of the Valley Ho.
The Valley Ho fits both images. A destination resort for previous generations, the 50-year-old property was made-over into a trendy, urban hotel in 2005. Thompson has since watched several other urban properties move into the area.
But he said that’s good for business. Having a cluster of hip hotels increases national awareness of Scottsdale’s new image — one that he said hasn’t quite caught up to reality — yet.
The Waterfront, with its complex of chic shops and eateries, will help, Thompson said.
And so will the W, slated to open in February. Scottsdale was “an obvious choice” for Arizona’s first W, said Michael Mahoney, chief executive officer of Triyar Hospitality, which is building the signature brand. Triyar, which owned choice downtown property for some time, decided a few years ago that the time was ripe to build.
“Clearly the dynamic of Scottsdale has changed dramatically. You can see it in the sports cars, the younger crowds in restaurants, and the tourists — young, exciting people looking for a Western experience,” Mahoney said.
But he agrees with Sacco that the resorts and the urban hotels are complimentary, not competitive.
“If you want to get away from it all, you will go to Scottsdale and stay at a resort,” he said.
“If you want to get involved, you will go to Scottsdale and stay at the W.”
The ‘‘trendy” list
Mondrian
Valley Ho
FireSky
Hotel Indigo
Hotel Scottsdale
Under construction
The W hotel is expected to open in February.
Planned
1, the new eco-conscious Starwood brand hotel, is planned, but has yet
to begin construction.
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