Casino Hotels

A hotel on Île Notre-Dame, next to the pavilion Expo 67 left behind, with the gaming floor as one part of a larger entertainment address.

The setting is unusual for this kind of property: an island in the St Lawrence, laid out as a park, reached by bridge or Métro from downtown Montreal. The complex grew around the former French pavilion of the 1967 World’s Fair, a glass-sided structure that still gives the place its silhouette and its long views back to the city skyline.

As a hotel it is straightforward and comfortable — rooms with good beds, quiet glazing and river or park outlooks, a front desk that deals fluently in both French and English, parking, and the kind of arrival that suits people driving in for a weekend. Dining runs from a buffet to a full restaurant, and the venue programmes concerts and shows through the year.

The gaming floor is the reason the complex exists and it is not hidden, but it is one wing of a building that also functions as a conference and event address. Guests who come for the park, the Formula One circuit on the same island or the summer festivals use the hotel the same way they would any other.

A resort hotel built into the escarpment above the Horseshoe Falls, where the view does most of the work.

Fallsview stands on the cliff on the Canadian side of Niagara, and the whole building is angled at the water. Upper-floor rooms look directly onto the Horseshoe Falls; the public levels are stacked so that restaurants and lounges get the same outlook. In a town full of hotels competing on that view, this one has among the best of them.

The accommodation is full-service resort in character: spacious rooms and suites, a spa, an indoor pool, meeting space, and a theatre that brings in touring performers and comedians on a regular schedule. Dining is broad — steakhouse, buffet, casual counters — because the property is built to keep a family or a coach party fed without leaving.

Its gaming floor is large and sits at the centre of the plan, but the resort is used just as often as a base for the falls themselves, the parkland walk along the gorge, and the wineries a short drive south. It functions as the anchor hotel of the tourist district rather than as a destination sealed off from it.

A hotel on the Fraser River next to Vancouver’s airport, with a marina at the back door and a rail link at the front.

River Rock sits in Richmond, on the arm of the Fraser that separates the city from Vancouver proper. Its position is the practical draw: minutes from the international airport, on the Canada Line into downtown, with a marina and float-plane dock attached and mountains visible on a clear day.

The hotel side is a genuine resort operation — a main tower of rooms and suites, a quieter all-suite building, a spa, and one of the larger show theatres in the region, which keeps a steady run of concerts. Richmond’s night markets and its dense concentration of Chinese restaurants are close enough that the concierge desk fields as many questions about dumplings as about the resort’s own kitchens.

Gaming occupies the ground floor and is busy, but a fair share of guests here are simply people with an early flight, a conference booking or a ferry to catch. As a hotel it is judged on the same terms as its neighbours: a comfortable bed close to the runway, and a way into the city that does not involve a car.

A resort hotel in Ontario’s lake country, owned by the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, with an entertainment hall that draws crowds from well beyond the region.

Rama is a country property rather than an urban one. It stands on First Nation land near Orillia, in the lakes and cottage belt north of Toronto, and it is the largest employer for miles. That ownership shows in the building: the interiors carry Anishinaabe design and artwork, and the resort presents itself as part of the community rather than as a franchise dropped into it.

The hotel is a full resort with several room categories, a spa, a pool and extensive meeting space, and a large entertainment hall that has hosted touring musicians and comedians for decades — for many guests the concert is the reason for the booking and the room follows from it. Restaurants cover everything from a buffet to steak and Asian kitchens.

It is a common weekend destination for people coming up from the city, and it works alongside the surrounding attractions: Lake Couchiching, the trails, the golf nearby. The gaming floor is one department of a resort whose main business is putting several hundred people up for a night and feeding them.