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How We Group

Method, sources and limits

Twenty hotels in a row is a list. Six groups is a reading, and a reading can be argued with, which is the point.

Why groups and not one long list

A list of twenty hotels tells you what exists and nothing else. We would rather say why two hotels belong near each other, so each of ours sits in a group of three or four with a single stated reason. That reason is written at the top of the group in two lines, and every entry below it answers to those lines.

How a group is chosen

We look for one shared trait that can be checked, not felt: a building that used to do other work, a brief that began with an architect, a unit that is a cabin, a site at the edge of water, a structure rebuilt each winter, a snow building inside something larger.

The trait is always single. As soon as a group needs two reasons to hold together, it has stopped being a group and become a mood, and we drop it and start again. Six was the number of traits that survived that test.

One hotel, one group

Several of these hotels could sit in more than one group. We still place each in exactly one, and it stays there. A hotel that appears in three groups explains nothing about any of them, and the reader loses the only thing the grouping was for. Where the choice was close, the entry itself usually says so.

What the six lines mean

One line is the hotel in a single sentence. The picture describes the building and the ground it stands on. Shared with the group explains the trait in that hotel, in its own words rather than by repeating the group heading.

Its own is the difference inside the group, and it is not criticism of the neighbours. It answers one question only: what does this hotel have that the other two or three do not? A fact, not a verdict. Nothing in it means that a hotel is stronger or weaker than the rest.

Getting there is preparation, not complaint. It says how people usually arrive, whether a car, a train, a ferry or a connection is involved, and whether the place keeps to a season. Checked gives the month in which we last re-read the published material for that entry.

Where the material comes from

Published sources: hotel and operator websites, architectural press, museum and municipal material, and reporting we can name. We re-read it by hand and date the reading. Two editors and one photographer keep this guide, working from different cities since 2022, with no single office.

We do not publish accounts of staying in these hotels, and we never write as though we had. Where a fact could not be confirmed in published material, it is left out rather than guessed. Hotels are welcome to send corrections, and we print them.

What this site does not publish

No prices, no star ratings, no scores, no ranking of any kind. No booking, no availability, no affiliate links, no paid placement and no commission. No opening times and no schedules, because those change faster than any guide can follow. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy.

Why an international guide has a Casino Hotels section

Four Canadian resorts are in the guide because they are buildings worth describing: reused exhibition pavilions, a resort on a gorge wall, a complex with its own marina, a low resort on First Nation land beside a lake. The gaming floor is not described, not counted and not judged. If that room is what you are looking for, this is not the guide for it.

The six groups