Barrett-Jackson: the January week Scottsdale plans around

Event · Scottsdale

What is Barrett-Jackson week like in Scottsdale?

Barrett-Jackson is the collector car auction held in Scottsdale each January, and for one week the north of the city belongs to it. Traffic thickens, restaurants fill, the whole Valley's hospitality trade runs hot, and a large share of the people you pass have flown in for the cars. If you are living in Scottsdale for a month or more, you get the version of that week nobody flying in can buy: you can go on a quiet weekday, leave when you have had enough, and come back another day.

That is genuinely the advantage. Visitors compress the entire thing into two crowded days at the peak of the run, because that is what a flight schedule allows. From a home a short drive away you can turn up early in the week when there is room to actually look at the cars, skip the busiest days entirely, and go back a second time if something caught your eye. You are not paying for a hotel at January rates, and you are not planning your week around a single ticket.

It also helps to understand what January means in Scottsdale more broadly. It is the busiest and most in-demand stretch of the entire year. The auction sits inside a run of large winter draws — the WM Phoenix Open golf tournament at TPC Scottsdale in the same winter window, the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show in February — and the city is at full capacity throughout. Homes for that window go early. Snowbirds and seasonal residents routinely book the following winter by late summer, which means if you want to be here in January, you are making that decision the previous year rather than the previous month.

The honest tradeoff is crowds. Through the auction week, north Scottsdale traffic is slower, reservations are harder, and the parts of the city nearest the event are best avoided if you have errands. If large crowds are not your idea of a good month, February and March give you almost identical weather with noticeably less pressure, and late March into April is the quietest good-weather stretch of the season. November is similar: warm, clear, and calmer than the deep winter peak.

There is a counterweight later in the year, too. Canal Convergence brings light installations and public art to the Scottsdale Waterfront in the autumn, drawing people to the canal path in the evenings when the temperature has finally dropped. It is free, outdoors, spread over several evenings, and much closer to the city's ordinary self than the January peak — which makes it a good argument for an autumn stay if you would rather see Scottsdale filling up than see it full.

If you're here for a month or more

If your stay overlaps January, do two things in your first week. Work out your route around the auction corridor in north Scottsdale so a normal grocery run does not turn into a forty-block detour, and get anything that needs a reservation onto the calendar before the crowd lands. Then pick a midweek day early in the auction run, go once without any plan to see everything, and go back later if you want to. And if you are booking for a January arrival at all, book early: Scottsdale winter homes are frequently gone by the end of the previous summer.