Casino Hotels

The Montreal property occupies the former French and Quebec pavilions from Expo 67, on an island in the St Lawrence a short drive from downtown. That inheritance gives it a shape no purpose-built casino hotel would have: stacked, angular, glassed, with sightlines back across the water to the city. As a hotel it trades on that setting and on its restaurants, which include a fine-dining room with a long-standing reputation in the city.

Rooms and service are aimed at guests who want a base for a weekend in Montreal as much as a night on the gaming floor. The floor itself is one part of a building that also runs a cabaret stage, several bars and a buffet, and the surrounding park on Île Notre-Dame is a real amenity in summer. The property is operated by the provincial lottery corporation, which shapes the tone: institutional, orderly, unflashy.

Fallsview is built into the escarpment above the Horseshoe Falls, and the view is the organising fact of the whole hotel. Guest rooms on the high floors look directly at the falls, the lobby is glassed toward them, and the property's best restaurant tables are sold on the same basis. It is a large resort hotel first — several hundred rooms, a spa, a 1,500-seat theatre that books touring names year-round — with the gaming floor occupying the lower levels.

Because Niagara Falls is a family destination, the hotel handles a broad mix of guests: couples on a weekend, conference groups, people who have come for a concert and never go near a table. Winter is quieter and cheaper, and the falls are arguably better then. Service is efficient rather than intimate, which is what a property of this size can honestly deliver.

River Rock sits on the Fraser River in Richmond, minutes from Vancouver International Airport and on the SkyTrain line into the city — a location that makes it a practical hotel quite apart from anything else it offers. There is a marina attached, and river-facing rooms in the newer tower are the ones worth asking for. The resort keeps a large theatre and a long list of restaurants, with Richmond's Chinese dining scene right outside the door.

The hotel side is genuinely resort-grade: spa, pool, meeting space, an airport shuttle that runs constantly. Guests often use it as a first or last night in British Columbia. The gaming floor is large and busy, but the building is arranged so that it is easy to stay on the hotel side of it entirely.

Casino Rama stands on the Chippewas of Rama First Nation land near Orillia, about ninety minutes north of Toronto and on the edge of the Muskoka lakes. It is the most remote of the four, and that changes what the hotel has to be: nearly three hundred rooms, a spa, several restaurants and an entertainment centre that has hosted major touring acts for decades, all because guests are not going to wander off into a city for the evening.

The First Nation ownership is not incidental — the resort is one of the region's larger employers and Anishinaabe design elements run through the public spaces. In summer the surrounding lake country is the reason many people book. Rooms are comfortable and generously sized rather than fashionable, which suits the audience the property actually has.