Casino Hotels

The property stands on Île Notre-Dame, in the pavilions built for the 1967 world exposition — an origin that still defines the silhouette, with tiered floors and long angled windows looking back across the water to the city.

Beyond the accommodation and the licensed gaming floor, the site includes restaurants at several price points, a cabaret-style performance space and function rooms used for conferences and private events. The island setting, with its parkland, rowing basin and motorsport circuit, is a common reason for booking in its own right.

Fallsview is built into the escarpment above the Niagara gorge, and the elevation is the point: a large share of the guest rooms and public terraces face the falls directly. It is a full resort hotel — several hundred rooms, a spa, a pool, a shopping galleria and a substantial theatre that programmes touring music and comedy through the year.

The gaming floor occupies a defined part of the complex. Most guests are in Niagara Falls for the falls, and the hotel is arranged around that assumption, with pedestrian links toward the tourist district and the viewing areas below.

River Rock sits on the Fraser River in Richmond, close to Vancouver's airport and on the rapid transit line into the city, which makes it a practical base as well as a destination. The property includes hotel rooms across two buildings, a marina, restaurants, a large show theatre and a licensed gaming floor.

The riverside frontage is the most distinctive thing about it — boardwalk, moorage, and float plane traffic overhead — and the events programme in the theatre draws a considerable number of guests who never set foot on the gaming side at all.

Casino Rama is set in Ontario's lake country north of Toronto, on the lands of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, and it operates as a resort rather than a city hotel: guest rooms, a spa, a spread of restaurants, meeting space and a gaming floor, all on one site surrounded by countryside.

Its entertainment hall is one of the larger venues in the region and books nationally touring acts, which shapes the rhythm of the place — quiet midweek, busy around show nights. Nearby lakes and trails account for a good deal of the summer trade.