SpaRatorHow SpaRator scores work
Treatments
Why this score
Narande's menu runs 15 massage styles plus facials, scrubs, wraps, and salon services from five treatment rooms. First-hand evidence is what's scarce: across the 199 TripAdvisor reviews I parsed and the spa's own listing, exactly three treatment accounts exist since 2019. In the newest, July 2025, a guest calls the hot-stone massage "pure heaven." A 2020 guest left sore. No therapist recurs by name anywhere I can reach, and Yelp's 32 spa reviews sat behind a bot wall this pass.
Spa Facilities
Why this score
Five treatment rooms, a rain-shower room, locker-room dry saunas, and no steam or hydrotherapy circuit place Narande's physical plant firmly in compact territory. No current source states its square footage, and I don't trust the one stale directory page that does. Outdoors, the resort compensates: mountainside hot tubs carved into the butte, three per the current day-pass listing against four in the 2018 loan filing, reached by stairs guests keep mentioning. November 2024's renovation rebuilt the fitness center next door and left the spa's footprint unchanged.
Wellness Programs
Why this score
Programming at The Buttes lives outside the treatment rooms: poolside yoga on weekend mornings at the Waterfall Pool Deck, guided butte-trail hikes on weekday mornings, tennis, sand volleyball, and a complimentary 24-hour fitness center rebuilt in the November 2024 renovation. All of it re-verified on Marriott's own activity listings this August, and all of it free. Guest reviews use the trails and pools as the stay's anchor; one valet, Brian, appears in four reviews partly for leading the morning hike.
Staff & Service
Why this score
Fourteen staff members at The Buttes appear in at least two independent TripAdvisor reviews each, six with 2024-to-2026 stays: front-desk names Jordan Taupo and Ryan Ho among them, and server Hiba, who one December 2024 guest credits with remembering their egg order from a year before. TripAdvisor's service subscore holds 4.3, Booking.com's staff score 8.6. One asterisk sits inside the spa: not a single Narande therapist recurs by name in the parsed record.
Experience
Why this score
Booking.com guests score The Buttes 8.2 across 217 reviews while TripAdvisor holds 4.1 across 1,678, ranking it #11 of 56 Tempe hotels; that split is the story. Rooms are the drag: at 3.9, the only TripAdvisor subrating below 4.0, and even a five-star July 2026 guest calls the property "a little outdated but well maintained." Recent stays run barbell-shaped, 30 of 37 from 2025-26 at four or five stars and four at one.
Value for Money
Why this score
The Buttes' fee math favors the guest: a $15 nightly resort fee ($17.11 with tax, off a January 2027 checkout) plus $15 parking, about half the load guests report at the market's benchmark resort. Summer nights from $180 direct ($147 on aggregators), free WiFi direct with Bonvoy, and $45 ResortPass day access extend it. Gouges are small but real. A July 2026 guest clocked the continental breakfast at $27 a head, and the flat fee bites harder in summer, 23% over the room rate in July against 19% in January.
Spa Facilities
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Beauty Services
salon and nail area; manicures, pedicures, waxing, men's services.
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Couples Treatments
dedicated couples room; couples massages on the menu.
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Fitness Center
24 hours, complimentary, fully renovated in the November 2024 program.
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Full-Service Spa
Narande Spa, five treatment rooms including a dedicated couples room and a rain-shower body-treatment room, plus a salon and nail area. Daily 9 am to 5 pm by appointment; no published price list.
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Hot Tub/Jacuzzi
mountainside hot tubs cut into the butte; the current day-pass listing counts three, the 2018 loan filing counted four, and guests report stair climbs to reach them.
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Pool Facilities
two heated free-form pools with a children's pool and a 56-foot waterslide; slide runs 11 am to sunset per the day-pass listing, and one June 2025 day guest found it idle until someone asked.
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Sauna
dry saunas in the locker rooms.
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Wellness Programs
poolside yoga Saturdays and Sundays 8 to 9 am at the Waterfall Pool Deck; guided butte-trail hikes weekday mornings from the lobby.
Other facilities
- Air Conditioning
- Bar
- Bike Rentals
- Business Center
- Concierge Service
- Dry Cleaning
- EV Charging Stations
- Garden Areas
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Restaurant
Top of the Rock on the summit, Market Café, Thirsty Cactus poolside, and The Greatroom lobby bar.
- Tennis
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Valet Parking
$15 per day, the same as self-parking, confirmed on a January 2027 direct checkout.
- Waterslide
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WIFI
$5 daily; waived for Bonvoy members booking direct.
Pricing & Availability
The Spa Experience at Marriott Phoenix Resort Tempe
Marriott Phoenix Resort Tempe at The Buttes is the Phoenix set’s airport resort: 353 rooms terraced into a volcanic butte 3 miles from Sky Harbor, pools and hot tubs cut into the rock. It opened in January 1987 as Westcourt in the Buttes, and the mountainside architecture remains the property’s best argument. And the spa? The quiet part.
The Spa, Specifically: Narande Spa
Narande, named for a Japanese phrase meaning alongside flowing water, runs five treatment rooms: a dedicated couples room, a rain-shower room for body treatments, and a salon and nail area alongside. Fifteen massage styles anchor the menu (our guide to choosing from a massage menu maps them), with facials, scrubs, and wraps behind them. No price list exists anywhere: you confirm costs when you book. Its wet offer ends at dry saunas in the locker rooms. No steam, no circuit. Here is what 199 TripAdvisor reviews taught me: twelve mention the spa at all, most of them meaning the hot tubs, and exactly two describe a treatment first-hand. One recent account, July 2025 on the spa’s own listing, calls its hot-stone massage “pure heaven.” Hours have firmed up: Marriott and the spa’s Google profile now agree on daily 9 am to 5 pm, though stale directories still show Monday closures, so call 602-431-2357 if a Monday matters. November 2024’s renovation rebuilt all 353 rooms and the fitness center next door; nothing in its scope named the spa.
Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong
Book The Buttes for the pool complex and the logistics, with a massage attached. Families get the waterslide and heated pools year-round, business travelers get 19 meeting rooms and an 8-minute Sky Harbor run, and summer rates from $180 buy the metro’s most dramatic budget pool day. Book elsewhere if the spa is the trip: five rooms, no steam, unpublished prices, and a guest record that barely notices it cannot anchor a wellness stay. Light sleepers, request an interior-facing room; one January 2026 guest found a patio room “VERY quiet” with the I-10 right there.
Where It Sits in the Phoenix Market
Mid-table in our ten-property Phoenix set, The Buttes does the value-and-logistics job. Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass (9.1), the market benchmark, fields a 17,500 sq ft Forbes Five-Star spa; Narande is not in that conversation. Closer fights: Arizona Grand Resort (7.5), pairing a larger spa with South Mountain trails, and Royal Palms (7.4), boutique romance at a higher rate. Narande’s guest silence echoes the marketed-spa invisibility I flagged at Omni Montelucia, though The Buttes never sold the spa as the point. Nobody else offers a heated mountainside pool complex 3 miles from the airport at half the benchmark’s fee load.
Updated August 2026: two direct Marriott checkouts confirm the resort fee at $15 nightly ($17.11 with tax) and valet at $15, and spa hours firmed to daily 9 to 5 after Marriott and Google aligned. Platform ratings moved: Booking.com 8.2 across 217, TripAdvisor 4.1 across 1,678, now #11 of 56 in Tempe. Spa Treatments recalibrated 7.4 to 7.2 after a 199-review parse found just two first-hand treatment accounts; the overall holds at 7.4. Correction: our earlier copy cited Royal Palms at 7.6; its current score is 7.4.
Platform ratings: 4.1/5 across 1,678 TripAdvisor reviews (#11 of 56 Tempe hotels), 8.2/10 on Booking.com from 217 reviews, 4.3/5 across 3,005 Google reviews; Narande Spa separately rates 4.0/5 on Google (35), and its 32 Yelp reviews were unreachable this pass. Sources: marriott.com property and experiences pages, a January 2027 direct-engine checkout, ResortPass and its review API, the November 2024 renovation release, the 2018 CMBS loan filing, and 199 TripAdvisor reviews parsed spanning December 2018 to July 2026. Disclosure: 55 of the 199 carry “collected in partnership with this hotel,” all from 2018-2022 stays; recent patterns lean on the organic set. Data gaps, stated plainly: Narande’s square footage, treatment prices, service-charge policy, and leadership are unpublished, and the hot-tub count (three or four) is unresolved. These questions are with the property.
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What Guests Are Saying
“Although Narande Spa doesn't offer a spa pool or other bells and whistles like many Valley of the Sun resort spas, the Hot Rock Massage I received was pure heaven.”
TripAdvisor reviewer, August 2025
“I think it would be a great place to hang out during cooler months to jump hot tub to hot tub.”
“Nice hotel located in and amongst the buttes however if you have any sort of mobility issues or disability it's probably not for you. Everything is up and down and the walk from some rooms to the restaurant is like a 10 minute hike.”
“Many reviewers reported traffic noise from I-10 — and that's fair if you are standing atop the butte looking onto the highway. However, we had a second-floor patio room facing into the resort, and it was VERY quiet”
Excerpts selected by our editors from recent guest reviews across booking and review platforms; sources and volumes are listed in How This Review Works below.
Average Guest Reviews
No Review Available
No Review Available
Location
Guest Experiences
Frequently Asked Questions:
Where is Marriott Phoenix Resort Tempe at The Buttes, and how far is the airport?
The resort sits at 2000 W Westcourt Way in Tempe, built into a volcanic butte beside Tempe Diablo Stadium, 3 miles from Phoenix Sky Harbor. Driving takes 8 to 10 minutes, and there is no airport shuttle; a rideshare costs little at that distance. Downtown Tempe and ASU are about 4 miles east.
What is Narande Spa, and what does it offer?
Narande, named for a Japanese phrase meaning alongside flowing water, is the resort's five-room spa: a dedicated couples room, a rain-shower room for body treatments, and a salon and nail area. Its menu covers 15 massage styles plus facials, scrubs, wraps, and nail services, with robes and slippers provided.
What are Narande Spa's current hours?
Daily, 9 am to 5 pm, by appointment. Marriott's experiences page and the spa's own Google profile now agree on that schedule, which settles the conflict we flagged in our last pass. Some third-party directories still show Monday and Tuesday closures, so call 602-431-2357 if your spa day hinges on a Monday.
How much do treatments at Narande Spa cost?
Narande publishes no price list; treatment prices are confirmed when you book. Recent guest reports give directional markers: a $75 gel manicure appears in Yelp feedback, and a professional reviewer took a 50-minute Tranquility Massage in April 2026 without listing the rate. Budget mid-market resort-spa pricing, below Scottsdale flagship levels.
Does the spa have a steam room or thermal circuit?
No. Narande's wet facilities end at dry saunas in the locker rooms; there is no steam room and no hydrotherapy circuit. For soaking, the mountainside hot tubs, open to all hotel guests, are the real offer, in a setting no indoor circuit matches.
Is there a resort fee, and what does parking cost?
Yes: $15 per night, which bills at $17.11 once Tempe's roughly 14% lodging tax lands on it, per a January 2027 checkout we ran on Marriott's own engine. Self-parking and valet are each $15 per day, and in-room WiFi is $5 daily unless you book direct as a Bonvoy member. That stack runs about half the nightly fee load reported at the market's flagship resorts.
Can I use the pools without staying overnight?
Yes. Day access sells through ResortPass from $45, covering the two mountainside pools, the hot tubs, the waterslide, tennis and volleyball courts, trail access, and free parking. One caution from a June 2025 day guest: the slide ran only on request that day, so ask at the towel desk rather than assuming it is closed.
Is the resort good for families?
Yes, deliberately. The waterslide, children's pool, and heated year-round pool complex draw families, children under 17 stay free using existing bedding, and cribs are free. One trade-off: an active, high-energy character rather than a quiet couples atmosphere.
What changed in the 2024 renovation?
All 353 rooms and suites were rebuilt in a multimillion-dollar program completed November 2024: new bathrooms with glass-door showers and quartz counters, backlit mirrors, new soft goods, and Aveda amenities. Columbia Sussex also redid the fitness center and expanded the outdoor meeting space and lobby bar terrace. Nothing in the scope named the spa, and no renovation moves the freeway.
Is freeway noise a real problem?
It is real and manageable. I-10 runs directly below the butte, and highway-facing rooms draw consistent noise complaints across 2024 to 2026 reviews. A January 2026 guest who booked a second-floor patio room facing into the resort reported a genuinely quiet stay, and the pool waterfalls mask much of the road on the deck. Request an interior-facing or patio room at booking if you sleep light.
What dining is on the property?
Four venues: Top of the Rock, the signature restaurant on the summit with views from Camelback to the Superstitions; Market Café for breakfast and lunch; Thirsty Cactus poolside bar and grill; and The Greatroom lobby bar. Budget for breakfast: a July 2026 guest put the continental spread at $27 a head. Top of the Rock at sunset is the property's best table.
Are pets allowed?
No. Only service animals complying with ADA regulations may stay. Some third-party listings still show pets allowed; they are out of date, so book pet-friendly competitors if you travel with a dog.
Is it a good business-travel base?
One of Tempe's most conference-capable: 19 meeting rooms across roughly 42,000 sq ft per the 2018 loan filing, with outdoor meeting space expanded in the 2024 renovation. That filing put group and commercial travel at 49 percent of demand, and the guest mix still reads that way midweek.
When should I go, and when is it cheapest?
January through April is peak, and the Angels' spring training at Tempe Diablo Stadium next door pushes mid-February through March rates highest; book that window 6 to 8 weeks ahead. A late-January 2027 night runs $351 on Marriott's own engine before tax against $180 for the same checkout in late July, a swing of nearly half, and aggregators dip to about $147 in the summer trough. A heated, shaded pool complex keeps the property usable at 110°F.
How This Review Works
Every SpaRator score is built the same way: six equally weighted categories, scored from more than 40 documented data points per property through independent spa and hotel facility research and analysis of thousands of verified guest reviews, then averaged, never hand-tuned. The result is a consistent, comparable rating across every property we cover. How SpaRator works
Reviewed by James Sinclair, founder of Spa Hotel Finder and creator of the SpaRator methodology. This review reflects synthesized editorial analysis, not a first-hand visit.
Last updated August 2026 · Reviewed under Guidelines Version 9.5
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