El Conquistor Tucson, A Hilton Resort Review
The El Conquistador, or “El Con” as the locals call it, is a great little resort located in Tucson, Arizona, right up against the Catalina Mountains. It has a great resort-style pool, sprawling grounds, massive tennis facility, and access to 27 holes of golf. Let’s see how our brief one-night stay went at the El Conquistador!
Booking and Check In
While I love using Hilton Honors points to save on Hilton stays, and the math worked out on this one- 50,000 points instead of paying $280 after room rate, taxes, and resort fee. However, I was eyeing an award stay in Cancun for early 2024 so it made sense to pay cash for our one night stay. Hilton waives resort fees on award stays, so I would be stuck paying $25 per night, despite having top-tier Diamond status with Hilton from my American Express Hilton Honors Aspire credit card.
For having diamond status, I get 1,000 points per stay, a $15 per person credit to use on property, as well as an upgrade to a standard suite if available. I’ve found that domestic Hiltons aren’t great at upgrading to suites so we received a casita room with two queen beds.
We had two rooms for this reservation, and we checked in the night prior via the app, which is a great experience. Hilton’s app allows you to see different rooms that you can assign yourself into, so you can choose the floor you want, location, etc. You can even pay to upgrade rooms. I’ve seen free upgrades reflected in the app on other stays as well. The tech is really great. However, one of our rooms wasn’t ready at check in time. The hotel responded nicely with breakfast vouchers, which ended up saving us $65 on breakfast charges the next morning!
Our Room
Our room wasn’t anything truly special. It’s located in the casitas, which is down the hill from the main resort. For some, this may be a detraction, but we like having the rooms open up to the outside rather than a hotel hallway here. It feels “closer to nature.” There are some downsides, including a steep hill you have to walk up and down to get to the resort, but golf carts are available 24/7 to be called for your convenience.
As you can see in the video, our room featured two queen beds, a decent sized fridge, drip coffee machine, and a normal-sized bathroom, as well as a patio with minimal views. The room itself could use updating (as could the whole resort, honestly).
Resort Amenities (Restaurants, Pool, Fitness)
The resort itself is great- there are several bars and restaurants to try out while you’re on property, including Epazote, which has great views of the mountains at sunset. We had some happy hour drinks to celebrate getting our two-month old to a resort for the first time!
Sundance Café is the resort’s breakfast room, which has an a la carte menu as well as buffet. Everything was pretty reasonably priced, and we opted for some a la carte items this trip. I loved the polenta dish I had, as everything had a “southwest” flavor to it. Overall, food at the resort was stellar and reasonably priced for a resort.
The resort’s pool is fairly large, with a main resort pool with loungers and tables around it, pool bar, and grill for pool snacks. There’s some rock work beyond adding fun character to the pool, with a great slide that has a small helix emptying into a smaller pool behind the rocks. There are also hidden hot tubs and plunge pools for adults, as well as a splash pool for the younger ones.
For fitness, the resort has a small fitness center with a lot of updated equipment, which is great. There’s also a massive tennis facility on a neighboring hill (you’ll need a golf cart to get there) that can host tennis tournaments, as it did on our visit. For golfers, there’s the 9-hole Pusch Ridge right next to the resort, and the 18-hole El Conquistador course a short drive away. For hiking, trails are located right off property, and the Tucson area has hundreds of miles of trails besides that.
Overall Impressions
The resort is definitely a hidden gem, with some room for improvement, especially in the resort rooms. The location is stellar, and I wouldn’t hesitate to return back. I think 50,000 points for a resort nowadays in the Hilton program is a relative deal as well, so hopefully some Hilton Honors members take advantage after reading this review.
