Chapter Three
Casino Hotels
Large serviced hotels, considered in the order a guest actually experiences them: room, service, building, floor.
Casino hotels are usually written about backwards. The gaming floor is put first, the hotel treated as an afterthought attached to it, and the result tells a reader nothing useful about whether the bed is good, whether the building is pleasant to walk through, or whether there is anywhere decent to eat at eleven at night.
This chapter reverses that. Each of the four properties below is a substantial hotel with rooms, restaurants, a spa and a theatre, located somewhere worth being; the casino is one of its floors. That is the honest description, and it is also the more useful one, because most guests spend far more of a stay asleep, eating, or looking out of a window than they do anywhere else.
Nothing on this page is an inducement to gamble. We quote no odds, describe no games in detail, and make no claims about outcomes. Where gaming is available it is noted as a feature of the building, in the same register as the spa or the concert hall.
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No. I
Montreal Casino & Hotel
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The casino occupies the old French and Quebec pavilions built for Expo 67 on Île Notre-Dame, which gives it an architectural pedigree no purpose-built gaming complex can match — a tall, angular, glass-walled structure on an island in the St Lawrence, with long views back across the river to the city.
As a place to stay, the appeal is the setting and the food. Guests are within walking distance of the parkland of Parc Jean-Drapeau, and the complex's restaurants have long been taken seriously in a city that takes restaurants seriously. Downtown Montreal is a short drive or metro ride away, so the island reads as a quiet base rather than an isolated one.
The gaming floor spreads over several levels and includes slots, tables and a poker room, alongside a cabaret room used for concerts and shows. It is one feature of a large entertainment building — the reason many people visit, but not the whole of what is there.
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No. II
Fallsview Casino Resort
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Fallsview is built into the escarpment directly above the Horseshoe Falls, and everything about the hotel follows from that position. The better rooms look straight down onto the falls; the public areas are arranged so that the view is available from the restaurants and the upper galleries as well as from the bedrooms.
The resort is large and self-contained in the way that Niagara hotels tend to be — a spa, a substantial spread of restaurants from casual to formal, retail, and a 1,500-seat theatre that books touring names year-round. In winter, when the falls freeze at the edges and the streets outside are cold, the ability to spend an entire evening indoors is a practical virtue rather than a marketing line.
The gaming floor is among the largest in the country, with slots, table games and a poker room. Treat it as one of several floors in a resort hotel whose real draw is what is outside the window.
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No. III
River Rock Casino Resort
Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
River Rock sits on the Fraser River in Richmond, a few minutes from Vancouver International Airport and on the Canada Line into downtown Vancouver, which makes it unusually useful as a hotel quite apart from its entertainment offering. There is a marina attached, and the riverfront walk beside it is a pleasant twenty minutes.
Rooms are comfortable and generously sized, the spa is well regarded, and the resort's proximity to Richmond's Asian dining districts — some of the best in North America — means guests are not obliged to eat on site, though the in-house restaurants are solid. A large theatre hosts concerts and comedy through the year.
The casino floor offers slots, table games and poker. For many guests the hotel functions primarily as a well-located airport-adjacent base with a great deal to do downstairs.
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No. IV
Casino Rama Resort
Rama, Ontario, Canada
Casino Rama stands on the lands of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation near Orillia, about ninety minutes north of Toronto and on the edge of the Muskoka lake country. The setting is its defining quality: this is a resort in the countryside, not an urban tower, and the surrounding lakes, trails and small towns are part of the reason to come.
The hotel itself is a full-service resort — multiple room categories, a spa, a range of restaurants and a well-known entertainment centre that has hosted major touring acts for decades. Weekends have the rhythm of a getaway property: people arrive on Friday, spread the stay across dinner, a show and a slow morning, and leave on Sunday.
Gaming is one component among several, with slots, tables and poker on the floor. Understood as a countryside resort hotel that happens to include a casino, it makes considerably more sense than it does described the other way around.
These four properties are licensed gaming venues with minimum age requirements and their own house rules. Details, hours and facilities change; confirm directly with the property before travelling.