About the index
iGamePortal is a small, independent editorial index of sixteen hotels, grouped into four categories that each answer the same question in a different way.
The premise is simple. A hotel is usually described in terms of what it offers — rooms, amenities, a score out of ten. That framing is useful when you already know what you want and are comparing near-identical options. It is close to useless when the interesting thing about a building is the idea behind it.
So this site is organised by idea instead. An art hotel that runs a free public museum on its ground floor has more in common with a Swiss estate that hangs its corridors than either has with the hotel next door. A capsule hotel inside an airport terminal and a snow building rebuilt every winter are both, in their own ways, arguments about what a room needs to be.
How the sixteen were chosen
Each category holds exactly four properties, selected because the category is legible in the building itself rather than in its marketing. In practice that meant favouring places where the defining feature is structural — a collection with its own floor, a sleeping unit that replaces a room, a gaming floor as one facility among several, a hotel that is dismantled each spring.
Sixteen is not a shortlist of the best. It is a set of clear examples, and it is meant to stay small enough to read in one sitting.
What this site does not do
- It does not take bookings, hold availability or pass enquiries to hotels.
- It does not publish star ratings, scores or guest reviews.
- It does not quote prices, because prices change faster than pages do.
- It does not offer, host or arrange gaming, wagering or play of any kind. The casino category describes hotels.
Geography
The index is not written from or for any one country. Properties are described by where they stand, and the four casino hotels happen to be Canadian because those four were the ones specified for that category. Nothing here assumes a particular reader's home airport.
Accuracy
Descriptions are general and true to the character of each property — what kind of building it is, where it sits, how it is used. They are not audited against hotel press material, and no claim on this site should be treated as a guarantee of current facilities. Hotels renovate, rebrand and close. If you spot something that has drifted out of date, the contact page is the place to say so.