Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain is a small full-service resort nestled in the mountains northwest of Tucson, Arizona. I booked our stay with a 7-night Marriott category 6 travel package certificate, bought years ago when they used to be a good deal. Before our stay, I thought that 7 nights might seem too long. In the end, though, my wife and I really didn’t want to leave. We would have happily stayed far longer!
The Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain is an excellent resort on its own, but two things make it especially stand out: the staff and the location. Nearly every interaction with staff members was pleasurable, including the valet greeting, check-in, restaurant and bar staff, on-site “ranger,” etc. Everyone we talked with seemed genuinely friendly and happy to do anything they could to make our stay great. And the location… wow! If you enjoy hiking or mountain biking, it doesn’t get much better than this. Several excellent trails are accessible within steps from the Ritz property!
Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain Bottom Line Review
If you like to hike or mountain bike and want to return each day to luxury, the Ritz is a fantastic choice.
- Points Price: Category 6, 50K points per night standard, 40K off-peak, or 60K peak. Note that this means that the 50K free night certs that you get annually with the Bonvoy Brilliant card and the Ritz card can often be used at this Ritz. And when the property is priced off-peak, you can use the 40K free night Choice Benefit available to those who achieve Titanium Elite status.
- Cash Price: Varies. During our stay, I believe that cash rates were at least $450 per night.
- Points Value: Good. It’s often possible to get about one cent per point value from your Marriott points. That’s better than average.
- King Room Mountain View: Very nicely appointed. Beautiful view from balcony. Comfortable bed. Large soaking tub. We checked in on a Saturday and no suites were available that night, but we were upgraded to an Executive Suite on the second night.
- King Executive Suite Canyon View: This was great! The one-bedroom suite offers both a very large full master-bath with soaking tub, as well as a half bath off the living room. The bedroom and living room are separated by a closeable door (which came in handy when my wife and I had Zoom meetings at the same time!). Strangely, while there was a balcony off both the living room and bedroom, they weren’t connected. In our suite, room 5006, the bedroom balcony was quite private with solid walls on both sides. This did not appear to be the case with most other rooms as far as I could tell by looking up from the resort property.
- Resort Fee: $50 per day. Includes: Daily fitness classes (not offered while we were here due to Covid); Access to golf driving range and putting green (club rental included); Unlimited use of mountain and road bikes; Guided Morning Walk; Desert Friends Experience; family board games; bocce ball; horseshoes; Unlimited use of tennis courts (equipment rental included); Evening mixology class. More details can be found here. We only took advantage of the “evening” (4pm) mixology classes but thanks to that alone we probably drank $50 per day in value.
- Parking: Free for self parking or valet parking.
- Service: Great! One night at dinner there was a problem with the kitchen that caused orders to get backed up, but our server brought us extra food while we waited and additionally comped part of our meal so we were very happy (thanks Shannon!).
- Turndown service: None at this time due to Covid.
- Dining: Excellent service and food, especially at the Core Kitchen & Wine Bar. We loved sitting outside for both breakfast and dinner with great food and beautiful views of the mountains. There was even natural entertainment: we were visited several times by a roadrunner, once by a Javelina herd, and once very briefly by a Bobcat.
- Marriott Elite Benefits: I was high-level elite (Titanium) at the time of this stay. Ritz-Carlton hotels are unfortunately exempt from providing most Marriott elite benefits, but I did receive a very welcome upgrade to an Executive Suite on the second day of our stay. It’s a real bummer that even top tier elites don’t get free breakfast at Ritz properties — that would have made this stay even better.
- Welcome Gift: On the second day of our stay, they sent a bottle of sparkling wine and four beers to our room as an anniversary gift.
- Marriott App Requests: During our stay, we often made requests to the front desk through the Marriott app. Each time, our requests were answered and handled quickly. These requests included asking for a different pillow, dining reservations, extra coffee pods, and more.
- COVID Notes: Staff members universally wore masks whenever indoors or when interacting with guests. Not all resort guests did the same, but with my wife and I fully vaccinated we weren’t too worried about it.
- Would I stay again? Yes! Within our family we have a few Marriott cards (Bonvoy Brilliant card and the Ritz card) that offer annual 50K free night certificates. I’d love to use these each year at this resort. Note that even after paying with points or free night certificates, a stay here isn’t free. You still have to pay the daily $50 resort fee and for food. Still, in my opinion, this resort is totally worth it.
Check-In Experience
Our arrival / check-in experience was so nice that I decided it was worth describing here…
Before our stay we told the resort’s guest services that we were unable to celebrate our 25th anniversary last year due to COVID and so we were celebrating with this trip (true story). When driving up to the resort, the first stop is a guard booth where we gave our name and were wished a happy anniversary. When we arrived at the front of the resort a minute later, we were greeted by name (clearly the guard had radioed ahead) and with another hearty “happy anniversary!”
At the check-in desk, Elias worked hard to find us a room we would be happy with. We could have immediately checked into a suite with a poor view, or a regular room with a great view. He even walked me around part of the hotel to show me different views before I picked the one I wanted. He said that a suite with a view would become available the next day (and so we happily did move rooms the second day).
Finally, since our preferred room wasn’t yet available, and even though we were trying to check-in early, Elias comped our lunch! This worked out fantastically since we had just flown in from the eastern time zone and our bodies really thought it was dinner time. We basically ate a full free dinner at around 3pm (Arizona was three hours behind eastern standard at the time).
Mixology Class
I hate mandatory resort fees, but the Ritz’s $50 resort fee stung much less thanks to the daily 4pm mixology class. The Ritz had just resumed this feature during our stay and hadn’t yet put it on the public calendar of events. As a result, my wife and I were literally the only people who showed up each day. We had a blast chatting with whichever bartender was running the class each day. Jonathan, shown above, was our “teacher” most days. His mixology enthusiasm was infectious! We stumbled away from each class with a happy buzz.
Off Notes
Despite this overall glowing review, not everything was perfect about our stay, but the issues were very minor:
- To|Go: One of the food options at the resort is called To|Go. It’s what it sounds like: a place to grab food and drinks to-go. It was inconvenient that To|Go was only open until noon each day. To get an afternoon snack at the resort, it was necessary to go to a full service restaurant. Plus, the one time I got food there (a breakfast sandwich), the English muffin was stale. That was a surprise since all of our other dining experiences were excellent.
- Tissues: This seems like such a minor thing, but it was grating. The facial tissues in the room were rough. This was easily fixed by asking for soft tissues, but it just seems so strange that a top-end Ritz would carry cheap, rough facial tissues. The only thing I can think of is that they bought these during the early part of the pandemic when paper products were in short supply and maybe they forgot to swap them out once better tissues became available.
- Water: The resort was great about providing lots of water for free to guests. The only problem is that we didn’t feel good about going through so many disposable plastic bottles. Some high end resorts provide free reusable water bottles to guests and have water refill stations all around. I’d love to see the Ritz do the same. Ironically, we used our Ventana Big Sur bottles and refilled in the Ritz’s fitness center (the one place were we found a water refill station)
Videos
Our Executive Suite:
A Javelina hangs out on a trail just outside of the resort:
A javelina herd visits us during dinner:
Ronnie the Roadrunner visits us for breakfast:
Rattlesnake!
Photos and Captions Follow
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
FYI Parking here is now another $40 (Valet only). I’m having a hard time justifying staying at a resort with $100 + taxes per night in mandatory fees, the highest of anywhere I’ve ever stayed.
Just got back from the Ritz Dove Mtn–LOVED IT-though the resort fee is now $60/night and many of the activities you referenced are no longer free or even offered. Our room was spacious, spotless and up to date as were all the facilities. In addition the setting is simply outstanding. While you’ll be treated to lovely desert scenery at many resorts in Tucson, the Ritz Dove Mountain’s location is drop dead gorgeous punctuated with majestic Saguaro cacti, mountains and fantastic sunsets. We did several hikes including a private ranger hike which was worth every penny of the $85pp fee. Breakfast was fresh hearty and delicious and their nightly “Ignite” traditional music “ceremony” was both delightful and unforgettable. Thank you Greg for reporting on your experience! I would have never found this place had I not read your review.
Finishing a visit now. Approached facial tissues with trepidation but can report they felt perfectly normal. Still far too many plastic bottles in use. Resort fee now $60.
Greg – Just got back from here and can’t say we were nearly as impressed as you were. I’m not sure if you got lucky and it was low capacity or what, but we didn’t come away very impressed.
I know posted check in time is 4pm, but we arrived around 2:30 and were assuming our room would be ready since we didn’t receive any special upgrade and the hotel was obviously not at capacity. Nope – they told us to just go wait and they’d call us. We finally received a call after 4pm finally telling us the room was ready. Must have been nice to get your entire lunch comped while you were waiting! All we received was the “free” water from the lobby.
Service overall was just “okay.” Definitely not to the level you’d expect at a Ritz Carlton. I emailed ahead of time mentioning our anniversary and asking for a great room if possible (I’m Platinum and didn’t expect a suite, but always love surprising my wife when they send us champagne and already know it’s our anniversary at check in). No one the entire time mentioned our anniversary or sent us any sort of congratulation gift etc. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants – they once again asked if it was for a special occasion and we mentioned our anniversary. Once again, no acknowledgement whatsoever. Now I understand I’m nitpicking here, but you typically choose somewhere like a Ritz over a generic Marriott due to little touches like this.
Another complaint was with the mixology “class.” This consisted of sitting us at a table with others there for the class, bringing all of the ingredients to the table, having someone pour them into a shaker, shaking them and pouring 1 drink for everyone. That was it. I appreciate the free drink, but don’t call it a “class” then basically have a guest make the drink for everyone and be done. I’d much rather have a free drink voucher each day for me to use on my drink of choice.
Overall I wouldn’t say we had a bad stay, but this is not somewhere I’d recommend to anyone unless they just happen to be in the area and the price is right. This is the 3rd Ritz I’ve stayed at and will likely be the last. I’ve never noticed anything special about them and all of them seem to simply be living on the Ritz name alone in order to jack up prices and cut corners everywhere else.
Wow, I’m sorry to hear this. It almost sounds like we went to completely different hotels.
Also quite nice in the Tucson area is the J.W. Marriott Resort at Starr Pass. Similar hiking, biking, etc. options but much closer to downtown and various attractions.
Just stayed at the JW last month and found it to be the worst JW I’ve ever experienced. Highly outdated, crowded, poor service and little to no Platinum benefits. If you want to stay downtown, a brand new Doubletree opened up and it was excellent.
I stayed 1 night at the JW after the Ritz because the Ritz was sold out that Saturday night. I didn’t get to experience too much of the hotel but here were my impressions:
Overall: The JW is fine, but the Ritz is a worthwhile destination in itself. There’s no way I’d ever pick the JW over the Ritz unless I was attending a conference at the JW. That’s true even though at the Ritz I have to pay a larger resort fee and pay for breakfast.
Glad to see there’s a RC in the States that provides FREE standard suite upgrades to Titanium members. There are a lot of other RCs in the US that do not follow Bonvoy’s rules about this.
Man, you had me until the rattlesnake …
One of the reasons I like Hawai`i so much — you can clamber over anything and splash around in any creek or pond without keeping an eye out for snakes.
Otherwise, I would need a free b’fast and fee-free drinks.
Happy anniversary! What a beautiful trip!
So I totally understand what you’re saying about the water bottles, but many businesses have closed down water refill stations due to covid-19 concerns.
Great review. I got married there 5 years ago and always wonder if I’m just biased because of that – but it really is a beautiful place. We love hopping down there for 1-2 nights from Phoenix to easily feel like you’re “getting away from it all”
Great review! We live about 5 miles from the Ritz off of Dove Mountain blvd and this is a wonderful area to live in if you can stand the summer temperatures. That trail system can be used by anyone once you check in at the hotel gate and we’ve enjoyed it a few times. Lots of other hiking and biking opportunities in the area.
Do they have a club level at this Ritz?
Luckily they don’t. I say “luckily” because my status wouldn’t have gotten me in and that would have been frustrating. 🙂
I think Marriott knew you were doing this write up.Lol They have bumped it to 55k (point saver) on most nights moving forward. In fact they increased the points required a great deal at almost every property globally a few days ago. Everything is pricing toward peak pricing everywhere almost through the end of the year. I am happy we booked our stay a while ago. Fantastic write up! Thanks
LOL. Yes, you’re seeing a weird combination of peak pricing and point saver at the same time. It doesn’t surprise me at all if most hotels within the U.S. have been bumped up to peak pricing since there seems to be a huge boom in domestic travel going on right now and most likely through the end of the year at least.
Went there last week of Nov 2018 with a cat 5 7 night cert (yes back then it was a cat 5), loved it. Glad you did too. Only thing is I was gold status only and got the same treatment as you with titanium. Goes to show the value of Marriott elite status has gone way down since!
Keep in mind that back then Marriott 50 night status was called Gold and now it’s called Platinum. So Titanium status now is like Platinum status then. Still, no real perks at Ritz either way. I wish St. Regis would take over all the good Ritz properties because they treat Marriott elites well.
Yes, that’s when merger happened and right after the fight +hotel packages became useless to redeem. Glad I got that cat 5, it was 450 a night, I combined some great Marriott offers amex cards and also a gift card from daily get aways and snagged a couples massage massage at that amazing spa for such a deal. Did you go to the spa? That pool used fully filtered spring water of drinking quality… never seen that at a spa before. Wouldn’t drink it though considering people swim in there.
the real story is how you managed to keep that certificate alive through April 2021!
LOL. I don’t remember the details of each extension, but one was after Marriott and SPG merged and it was easy to extend for another year by calling and having them convert the certificate to the new style.
One of the cheapest Ritz in the US. I had stayed at that Ritz multiple times for under $150 per night. Amex fhr comes in with brekkie credit and $100 to boot. They regularly have gov rates that are around that much as well. Excellent hotel indeed.
That’s an amazing price!