Arizona · city

What a trip to Scottsdale costs

A week in Scottsdale for eight people works out around $7,060 before flights — $134 a night for a place sleeping four, scaled for the group, plus $81 per adult per day for food. From Los Angeles it is cheaper for a family of four to drive than to fly.

A Sonoran Desert city adjoining Phoenix, known for golf, resort spas, the Old Town district, and Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio.

with children okadults-only trip goodstroller / limited mobility ok

What a week costs

Lodging and food only. Seven nights, whole-property rental, all fees in.

Group	Lodging	Food	Total	Per person
4 people	$938	$2,270	$3,210	$802
8 people	$2,520	$4,540	$7,060	$883
12 people	$3,450	$6,800	$10,300	$855

Note the per-person column does not simply fall. A place sleeping four is the efficient unit; going to eight means changing property class, which costs more than double. Past eight it improves again — each additional person adds roughly half what they did over the first jump. The expensive step is condo to house, not the people you put in it.

How Scottsdale compares

ScottsdaleCities median of 7All destinations median of 40

Nightly lodging for a property sleeping four, month by month. Medians are taken across the seeded destinations in each group, so they are the middle of that group rather than any one place.

Averaged across the year, Scottsdale runs $190 a night for a property that sleeps four. That is 36% below the median for all 40 destinations in the library ($295), making it the 4th cheapest of 40 destinations. Against its own kind it is priced almost exactly at the typical city ($195).

Its season swings 103% between its cheapest and most expensive months, against 32% for the typical city. Timing matters more here than it does for most cities.
It is above the all-library median for 1 months of the year and below it for the other 11 — so whether it counts as an expensive destination depends entirely on when you go.
The same week costs $963 more in February than in June on lodging alone, before anyone has bought a flight.
It is at its most expensive in February and cheapest in June — the opposite of the library as a whole, which peaks in July. Advice about avoiding summer prices is the wrong way round here.
Driving beats four seats from Los Angeles. The longest of those is Los Angeles — 436 road miles and 7.6h each way, saving $186 against four seats.
The cheapest seven nights of the year fall in June, at $938 for the whole property — $1,901 for the same week in February.
The sharpest single step is between March and April: moving the same week across that line changes the lodging bill by $564.
The closest thing to it on price is Orlando, FL, another city: $7,327 for a week for eight against $7,060 here, 4% apart.

When to go

Scottsdale is at its most expensive in February and cheapest in June — a 103% swing on the same property.

Month	Per night, sleeps 4
January	$190
February	$272
March	$272
April	$191
May	$191
June	$134
July	$134
August	$134
September	$190
October	$190
November	$190
December	$190

Getting there

The two halves are not priced the same way, which is the whole point: a seat costs per person, a car costs the same whatever the headcount.

	Flying		Driving
From	Round tripper person	Each wayhours	Round tripper car	Each wayhours	Cheaperfor four
Atlanta	$416*	7.9h	$2,657	28.2h3 days	flying
Chicago	$526*	5.9h	$2,415	25.7h3 days	flying
Dallas	$264*	4.6h	$1,478	15.9h2 days	flying
Denver	$220*	4.1h	$1,046	11.5h2 days	flying
Los Angeles	$212*	3.6h	$662	7.6h	driving
New York	$562*	9.1h	$3,595	38.2h4 days	flying
Seattle	$334*	5.2h	$1,872	19.9h2 days	flying

Drives over ten hours are shown in days as well: nobody drives that in one go. The nights on the road are not counted here, so a long drive is cheaper on this page than it would be in life. * published DOT average for that airport pair. Others are modeled from distance. Driving uses the IRS standard mileage rate, which includes running costs, not just fuel.

See all 7 cities in the library →

Compare Scottsdale against other destinations →

Where these numbers come from

Lodging is indexed from the US federal per-diem schedule (GSA) for this county, calibrated against real rental listings. Food uses this location's own federal meal tier. Fares come from the DOT Consumer Airfare Report where that airport pair is published, and from a model fitted to 2,089 real DOT fares otherwise. Everything here is an estimate for planning, not a quote — check real prices before booking.