Casino hotels, described as hotels
A casino hotel is a hotel with a gaming floor among its facilities, in the same way that a resort hotel has a spa or a conference hotel has ballrooms. That is how these four are treated below — by site, by architecture, and by what a guest actually encounters across a stay.
All four are in Canada, and all four are notable for their settings: an island built for a world's fair, an escarpment above a waterfall, a river frontage near an airport, and a lakeside site in Ontario cottage country. Nothing on this page is a gaming product, and no play of any kind is offered or arranged here.
Casino
Montréal Casino & Hotel
Île Notre-Dame, Montréal, Québec, Canada
This is a hotel with one of the more unusual addresses in Canadian hospitality: Île Notre-Dame, a man-made island in the Saint Lawrence, on a site built for Expo 67. The former French and Québec pavilions were converted rather than replaced, so the property has a genuinely distinctive silhouette and a lot of glass facing the water.
Guests get parkland, river views and a short drive back into central Montréal, alongside restaurants, event space and a gaming floor that is one feature of the property rather than the whole of it. The island setting is the thing people remember.
- Expo 67 pavilion architecture
- Island parkland setting
- Gaming floor among several facilities
Casino
Fallsview Casino Resort
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
Fallsview is built into the escarpment above the Horseshoe Falls, and it is organised around that view — public rooms, restaurants and a substantial share of guest rooms face the water. The escarpment position means the building is entered at one level and occupied several floors below or above it.
Beyond accommodation, the resort runs a large concert theatre, a spread of restaurants, retail and a gaming floor. For most guests it functions as a base for Niagara itself, with everything else treated as what happens after dark.
- Overlooks Niagara Falls
- Large theatre on site
- Hotel, dining and gaming under one roof
Casino
River Rock Casino Resort
Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
River Rock sits on the Fraser River in Richmond, a short rail journey from central Vancouver and closer still to the airport, which makes it a practical stop as well as a destination. There is a marina attached, and the riverside frontage gives the hotel an outlook most airport-adjacent properties cannot offer.
The resort combines guest rooms and suites with a show theatre, a range of restaurants, conference space and a gaming floor. Its scale is large, but the low riverbank setting keeps it from feeling like a tower.
- Fraser River frontage
- Adjacent to a transit line
- Theatre and marina on site
Casino
Casino Rama Resort
Rama, Ontario, Canada
Casino Rama stands on the Chippewas of Rama First Nation's land near Orillia, in Ontario's lake country, and it is owned and operated by that community — a fact that shapes both its design references and its role in the region's employment.
The hotel is the anchor of a resort that also holds an entertainment centre used for touring concerts, several restaurants and a gaming floor. Its appeal owes a great deal to the location: a couple of hours north of Toronto, with Lake Couchiching and the cottage country beyond it.
- First Nations owned and operated
- Lakeside Ontario setting
- Entertainment venue on site
