Category three · Four hotels

Casino Hotels

Hotels built around a gaming floor, with the restaurants, theatres and meeting space that come with it. The four here are read the same way as every other hotel in this index — the building, the rooms, the service — with the gaming floor treated as one facility among several.

Montreal Casino & Hotel

Montréal, Québec, Canada

The complex sits on Île Notre-Dame, on the former Expo 67 site, and its main structure is one of the pavilions from that world's fair rather than a purpose-built box. That inheritance shows: circular floor plates, a lot of glass, and views back across the water to the downtown skyline.

For a guest the property functions as a self-contained island stop — several restaurants at different price points, a cabaret-style performance space, and a gaming floor spread over multiple levels. Getting there means crossing a bridge into a park, which gives the whole visit a distinct edge-of-city feeling.

Fallsview Casino Resort

Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Fallsview is cut into the escarpment above the Niagara gorge, and the building is organised around that single fact. The public rooms step down the slope, and the upper guest floors look directly at the Horseshoe Falls — the view is the reason the hotel is shaped the way it is.

Beyond the rooms it runs like a small resort town under one roof: a large theatre that books touring acts, a spa, a run of restaurants and a shopping concourse, plus the gaming floor. Guests can spend a whole wet afternoon without stepping outside, then walk down to the falls when it clears.

River Rock Casino Resort

Richmond, British Columbia, Canada

River Rock sits on the Fraser River just south of Vancouver, with its own marina and a location that puts the airport a few minutes away and the city a short transit ride north. The rooms in the main tower are generously sized and many face the water.

The property's best-known feature is its theatre, a mid-size venue that gives the hotel a steady flow of concert traffic, and the food offering leans harder on Cantonese and regional Chinese cooking than most resorts of this type. The gaming floor is on the ground level, separate from the hotel entrance.

Casino Rama Resort

Rama, Ontario, Canada

Casino Rama stands on the Chippewas of Rama First Nation land near Orillia, about ninety minutes north of Toronto, and it is owned by that First Nation — a fact the building acknowledges in its artwork and naming rather than hiding behind generic resort styling.

It is a country property rather than an urban one: a low, spread-out complex surrounded by lake country, with a large entertainment centre that has been the draw for touring musicians for decades, several restaurants, a hotel tower and a gaming floor. Most guests arrive by car and stay the weekend.

Reading the category

Read as buildings, these four have little in common beyond the category — a world's-fair pavilion on an island, a hotel cut into a gorge, a riverside tower next to an airport, and a low resort in lake country owned by the First Nation whose land it stands on. The gaming floor is what puts them in the same chapter; almost nothing else does.