WM Phoenix Open 2027 hotel guide

The WM Phoenix Open is the best-attended golf tournament on earth, and the only one that behaves like a stadium event. The last crowd count the Thunderbirds published was 719,179 for the 2018 week, with 216,818 on that Saturday alone, per Golf News Net’s attendance history of February 7, 2026. They stopped publishing before the 2019 tournament. Chance Cozby, then tournament director, told Golf Monthly the only number they care about is charity. The crowd did not shrink. The counting did.

For a hotel shopper the number that matters is the calendar. Tournament week is February 8-14, 2027. It opens Scottsdale’s peak season, it ends on Super Bowl Sunday, and NBA All-Star Weekend checks in to downtown Phoenix five days after the final putt. The February 2027 collision piece makes the case that Phoenix is the hardest room of the month. This page is the week that starts the squeeze.

Where to stay

All of this is north Scottsdale geography. TPC Scottsdale sits at Hayden Road and Bell Road just north of the Loop 101, and the main gate is on Bell at 82nd Street, directly across from where the Birds Nest tent goes up. Five clusters matter, in order of how much walking they save you.

Princess Drive, on the course. The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess shares a property line with the Stadium Course and has been the tournament’s host hotel for more than 30 years. Its guests walk in through a private entrance in the resort’s backyard at the 5th hole, which is the single best commute in the sport. It is also the hardest room. On October 12, 2026, Booking.com showed no availability at the Fairmont for any night from Thursday, February 11 through Saturday, February 13, while the Sunday night of the 14th showed $835 and the nights after it $925. Read that as the Friday and Saturday nights already sitting in hospitality and corporate blocks four months out, not as a sellout to fans. The rest of Princess Drive runs east toward the 101 and holds the select-service tier: a Hilton Garden Inn at 8550 East Princess Drive, plus a Residence Inn and a Courtyard at Perimeter Center. Those are the rooms for anyone whose plan is “walk to the Princess Drive gate at 7:15, never see a parking lot.” Expect them to be non-refundable only by the time you read this; on October 12 every rate the Hilton Garden Inn showed for February 12-14 was prepaid.

Cavasson and the Hayden corridor. Just south of the course, where Hayden meets the 101, the Nationwide campus at Cavasson has grown a hotel cluster: a full-service Hilton that Booking.com lists 1.4 miles from TPC, with Hyatt Place and Hyatt House properties nearby. Hayden has sidewalks the whole way, so this is a half-hour walk north to the Bell Road gate or a short ride. Couples and work trips who want a real pool and restaurant without Fairmont pricing land here. The Hilton was taking Feb 12-14 bookings on October 12, prepaid only, at roughly double what the budget tier was asking.

Kierland and Scottsdale Quarter. The Westin Kierland Resort at 6902 East Greenway Parkway anchors the cluster that Phoenix Open week was built for: Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter are the two outdoor malls across Scottsdale Road from each other, and their bars are where the 16th-hole crowd ends up by 6 p.m. Kayak lists the Westin at 1.6 miles from TPC’s Champions course; the Stadium Course gates are farther. The honest walking route is Greenway Parkway east, which becomes the Greenway-Hayden Loop and runs straight to the entrance the Thunderbirds added in 2025 beside the 18th tee. It is flat and it is long. Ride in, walk out. This is where the 25-to-40 crowd books, and it is the one cluster where the Saturday night rate can rival Princess Drive because the demand is the party, not the golf.

The Airpark and the Scottsdale Road strip. South of Kierland, between Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard and Thunderbird Road, the Scottsdale Airpark holds the week’s budget supply: Best Western, Holiday Inn, extended-stay brands, most with free parking and breakfast. Booking.com puts the Best Western Plus Thunderbird Suites three miles from WestWorld, which is the Open’s general parking lot, and two blocks from Scottsdale Quarter. The trade is a ten-minute drive to the lots or a ride to the gate in exchange for a rate that still had a free-cancellation tier on October 12, which neither of the closer Hiltons could say.

Old Town Scottsdale. Ten miles south and the Valley’s nightlife engine. If the bars are the trip and the golf is the excuse, book here and treat the course as a daily rideshare. No rail reaches Scottsdale.

Downtown Phoenix and Tempe. Only if you are doing the All-Star double. The arena guide and the All-Star guide cover downtown and the Tempe light-rail play; for the Open, those bases are a long freeway commute each way.

The rental play

Scottsdale is one of the deepest short-term-rental markets in the country, and the neighborhoods ringing the course are the heart of it: Grayhawk and the DC Ranch side north of the 101, McDowell Mountain Ranch to the east, condo stock in Kierland and the Airpark. Whole homes with pools and casitas, a lot of them, close enough that a five-minute drop-off is realistic.

A rental wins in three cases. Groups of four or more, where a house split four ways undercuts two hotel rooms and adds a kitchen for the 5 a.m. Saturday departure. Families, because a backyard pool is the afternoon plan. And anyone staying Monday through Sunday, because the minimums that attach to Friday and Saturday do not bite on a seven-night booking anyway.

Two Scottsdale rules shape the search. The city requires a license for any property rented for less than 30 days under Ordinance 4566, so a listing without a license number is a listing to skip. And Ordinance 4719 bars short-term rentals from operating as commercial event venues; the pregame-at-the-house plan ends with a neighbor complaint and a fine. Pricing runs high and stays high: AirROI’s trailing-year data through July 2026 has Scottsdale rental rates peaking in March at a $543 average with February in the same band, before the Open-week premium stacks on top. Cancellation tiers go strict for this week. Hold a refundable hotel room as the backstop, then shop Vrbo and Airbnb against it on the all-in number with cleaning fees included.

Getting there

Flying. Phoenix Sky Harbor is the airport, and the drive is the Loop 202 to the Loop 101 north. Scottsdale Airport sits in the Airpark two miles from Princess Drive and is private aviation only; tournament week is when it gets busy.

Driving and parking. General parking is at WestWorld of Scottsdale, Lots A, B and C, open every day of tournament week, with free shuttles to the gates. In 2025 the parking itself was free, per azfamily’s February 4, 2025 guide. The exits matter: leave the Loop 101 at Princess Drive or Bell Road. The lots cannot be reached from the Hayden or Scottsdale Road exits, and the tournament’s own guidance says not to try. From the East Valley it is the Bell exit; from the West Valley, Frank Lloyd Wright north to Bell and follow the signs. In past years the WestWorld shuttles have run roughly 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and to 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. Salt River Fields, the Diamondbacks’ spring-training park 7.6 miles south, opens as overflow Wednesday through Sunday from 9 to 6 with a free shuttle. The grass lots next to the course are pass-only.

One weather note that is really a parking note. In 2024 rain earlier in the week ate about 300 WestWorld parking spots and turned the walkway between 15 and 16 into mud, which is part of how Saturday went wrong. If it rains the week of, assume the shuttle loop slows down and leave earlier.

Rideshare. Drop-off and pickup is Lot R at the Bell Road Sports Complex, 94th Street north of Bell, with a shuttle between the lot and the gates. That layout is the surge reality: the course empties at once, everyone shuttles to the same lot, and the queue forms before the cars do. Price it as a wait, not just a fare. The cleaner exit from the Princess Drive side is to walk to a hotel bar on Princess Drive and request from there an hour later. After the Birds Nest, rideshare pickup moves to Hartford Drive south of Princess, and the post-show shuttles run back to the WestWorld lots.

Transit. Valley Metro Rail runs through Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa and does not enter Scottsdale. There is no train to this tournament and no bus plan worth the morning. The rail matters only if you are doing the All-Star double from a downtown or Tempe base; for the golf, it is cars and shuttles.

The 2027 wrinkle. The Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show runs February 11-21, 2027 at WestWorld, per the Arabian Horse Association of Arizona. That is the same WestWorld whose lots are the Open’s general parking, and the overlap covers all four tournament rounds. The tournament’s spectator page says parking operations, routes and lot availability may change as the week approaches. Check it the Monday of tournament week, not in October.

Event rhythm

Monday, February 8 and Tuesday, February 9. Ford Free Days: no ticket, practice rounds, the course at its calmest. This is the only window where standalone cameras are allowed.

Wednesday, February 10. Traditionally the pro-am (the Annexus Pro-Am in 2026). General admission starts at $75. At 4 p.m. the Coors Light Birds Nest opens across Bell Road from the main gate at 82nd Street, with Riley Green headlining and Ashley Cooke opening. The Birds Nest is 21-and-over with ID, headliners go on around 8:30, and the four nights run Wednesday through Saturday.

Thursday, February 11. First round. Jason Aldean and Josh Ross at the Birds Nest. The horse show opens at WestWorld.

Friday, February 12. Second round, $125 ticket, the first day that sells out. Snoop Dogg with T-Pain at the Birds Nest, which will pull a different crowd than the two country nights.

Saturday, February 13. The day the tournament is famous for. The 16th is a par-3 inside a fully enclosed stadium that tournament officials put at 20,000-plus, with 298 suites and general-admission grandstand rows that fill first-come, first-served. Fans start lining up at the main gate around 4:30 a.m.; the Thunderbirds feed the line breakfast burritos with DJs and call it the Breakfast Club; the gates open at 7 and the crowd runs to 16. Miss the run and you are looking at a two-to-three-hour wait for a grandstand seat. Saturday’s Birds Nest act had not been announced as of October 12, 2026.

Sunday, February 14. Final round, back to $75, and Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood the same day. The Open has ended on Super Bowl weekend since 1973. Sunday’s crowd thins through the afternoon as people head for a screen, which makes it the easiest day to walk the back nine.

Weather. NOAA’s 1991-2020 normals for Scottsdale put February at a 69-degree high and a 46-degree low. The 4:30 a.m. Breakfast Club line is a 46-degree line; the 2 p.m. grandstand is a sunburn. Bring both layers, and remember the 2024 week is what rain does to this course.

What the gates enforce. The 2026 rules, as reported by azfamily on February 2, 2026: no opaque bag larger than 6 by 6 by 6 inches, no clear bag larger than 12 by 6 by 12. No backpacks or chair bags, no coolers, no outside drinks, no glass. Phones are fine all week for photos and video; the tournament has allowed that for years. Standalone cameras are for practice days only, and video cameras are out every day. The main gate opened at 7 a.m. in 2026, the Princess Drive and Hayden Road gates at 7:15. Plan each day as one entry and do not build a plan around leaving and coming back.

Why the rules got stricter. Saturday, February 10, 2024 is the reason the tournament looks the way it does now. Rain-soaked grounds pushed the crowd onto the concrete, and early that afternoon the Thunderbirds closed the gates and stopped alcohol sales, a first in the tournament’s history, per Sports Illustrated’s report that day. Scottsdale police counted 54 arrests for the week against 18 in 2023, with 211 ejections, per ABC15. The fixes for 2025, announced in October 2024: every ticket digital and day-specific, so the tournament knows the exact count each morning; the good-any-day ticket gone; a new entrance beside the 18th tee off the Greenway-Hayden Loop; widened walkways. Tournament chairman Matt Mooney framed the year as making the tournament better rather than bigger. The 2024 caps on general admission (Saturday’s went on the week before the tournament, Friday’s on the Monday of it, per Cronkite News) are now structural. Buy the Friday or Saturday ticket when you book the room.

The February stack

The Open does not have the Valley to itself, and the order matters for your rate.

Barrett-Jackson’s collector-car auction runs January 23-31, 2027 at WestWorld, nine days in 2027, and ends eight days before the Open starts; the auction crowd leaves and the golf crowd arrives, which is why north Scottsdale rates never really drop in late January. The Open runs February 8-14. The Arabian Horse Show overlaps it from February 11 and runs to the 21st. Super Bowl LXI is Sunday the 14th in Inglewood, a TV collision rather than a hotel one. Then the week everyone else is writing about: MLB’s 2027 spring schedule, published in early September 2026, opens Cactus League play on Friday, February 19 with eight games, including a Diamondbacks split squad against the Rockies at Salt River Fields and the Diamondbacks at the Giants at Scottsdale Stadium in Old Town. That same Friday, NBA All-Star opens downtown and runs through Sunday the 21st.

So the only soft patch in Scottsdale between late January and the end of March is Monday, February 15 through Thursday, February 18. If you are doing the Open and All-Star as one trip, those four nights are your discount, and the collision piece’s booking order (Phoenix first, refundable, now) applies to both ends.

The money play

Here is how the pricing machine works for this week, so it can’t be run on you.

Late winter is the annual peak of the Phoenix hotel market. Visit Phoenix’s Eric Kerr told Hotel Dive in July 2024 that March is the market’s biggest peak, on the back of spring training; the Open sits at the front edge of that run. The clearest measurement of what the Open does to a weekend came in February 2023, when Super Bowl LVII landed on the same weekend: CoStar recorded Phoenix-market occupancy of 86.9 percent, an average daily rate of $538, and 22 hotels averaging above $1,000, with ADR running about 150 percent of a normal February weekend. The 2027 Open does not have a Super Bowl attached, but it has the horse show, the start of peak season, and All-Star five days later, and the resort comp set prices against all of it.

The mechanics, in plain words. Revenue managers, the people who set hotel rates, price against a comp set, the handful of nearby hotels they benchmark. They watch pickup pace, how fast the week is booking compared with a normal February. When it books fast, the whole comp set raises rates together and shuts off the discounts (a stop-sell on the advance-purchase rate, a rate fence that keeps the AAA rate off the event nights). Then they attach minimum-length-of-stay rules to Friday and Saturday, so a one-night Saturday booking is simply not offered. The sold-out-weekend explainer walks through each of those; the short version is that every one of them is a reason to book before the pace turns.

What that looked like on October 12, 2026, four months out, on Booking.com: the Fairmont showed nothing for Thursday through Saturday and $835 to $925 for the nights around them. The two closest Hiltons were bookable for February 12-14 on prepaid, non-refundable rates only, with no cancellable tier offered at all. The Airpark Best Western still carried both, and its free-cancellation rate ran about 22 percent above its prepaid one. That spread is the price of optionality in this market, and it narrows to zero as the close-in hotels drop the flexible tier entirely.

So, the plays:

• Book refundable now, close to the course, and keep shopping. Take the cancellable rate wherever it still exists, even at a premium, and use the refundable-rate playbook to rebook if a better number surfaces. Know your cancellation cutoff to the hour before you rely on it.
• Buy only the nights you need. Friday and Saturday are the expensive nights and the ones with minimums. Wednesday to Saturday buys the Birds Nest and the 16th-hole run; Thursday to Sunday buys all four rounds. Arriving Monday for the free practice days means paying peak rates for two nights of practice golf, which only pencils if a rental is splitting the week.
• Points are a real play here. There is a Hilton cluster within a mile and a half of the course (the Garden Inn on Princess Drive, the full-service Hilton at Cavasson), plus Hyatt and Marriott properties at Cavasson and Kierland. When the cash rate is prepaid-only, a points booking is often the last cancellable rate on the property; the points piece has the math.
• Packages exist, but read what’s in them. PGA Tour-partnered sellers like Golfbreaks bundle tournament tickets with hotel nights and rounds at other courses. For a skybox group that can beat assembling it yourself; for a general-admission trip it rarely does. The official-packages explainer covers how to tell.

One thing you will not find here is a player hotel. Golf has no team hotel; the field is spread across resorts, rentals and friends’ guest rooms all over north Scottsdale, and the no-team-hotel piece explains why chasing it is a waste of a booking. The Fairmont’s 5th-hole gate is the closest thing, and those nights are already gone.

Guide updated 2026-10-12