What comes round, and how we choose it

A repeating action is something a hotel does over and over, without being asked and without being sold. It is not a service from a brochure and not an amenity sheet. If a house would still do it with nobody watching, and if a guest coming back a year later would find it going on, it belongs on this site.

Each entry opens with a poster line, which is the shortest true sentence we can write about that action. Then three short blocks follow. What comes round again describes the action itself and what it is made of. Where it happens names the room, the yard, the bath, the ice or the shore it takes place in. What it does to the place is about the building: how the house behaves differently because of it.

The three blocks are meant to stay separate. If the second one starts repeating the first, we have not looked closely enough at the room, and if the third one only restates the action, we have not understood what the action changes.

There is no clock anywhere on this site. No times, no schedules, no days of the week. Opening arrangements change, seasons change, and a printed time is wrong within months, so we name the part of the day in words instead: while the light lasts, when the light goes, before anyone is up. That much stays true.

We also never promise a natural event. Northern light, weather, snow and ice appear here as reasons why a hotel does something, never as a guarantee that you will see them. A house can wake you when the sky glows. Whether the sky glows is not the hotel's to give and not ours to sell.

Ask when you book is a line of preparation, not a complaint. These are working hotels and resorts, and the practical detail we point at is usually a question of season, of access or of house rules. Asking it early is simply how anyone books well, and none of it should be read as a fault in the building.

Last looked at is the month we last opened the published material behind an entry. It is not the date of a visit and not the date the action last took place. When we open the material again and nothing has changed, the month still moves forward, because the check is what the line records.

The material is published material: hotel and resort sites, architectural and trade press, and public statements by the operators. We do not publish accounts of staying anywhere, we do not claim to have slept in these buildings, and we do not invent shortcomings for houses that are open for business and are run by people who can be contacted.

What is never published here: prices, star grades, ratings, scores, room counts, booking links, affiliate links and paid placements. Nothing on the site can be bought, and a correction cannot be bought either. Two of us have run the guide since 2020, and a photographer we work with makes the pictures.

There is a Casino Hotels part because four large Canadian resorts do the same thing the rest of the guide is about: they run a hall, they put people on a stage, and they open a way out to the water. Those entries describe the hall and the shoreline. The gaming floor is not described, not judged and not the reason any of the four is here.