Eighteen hotels, described as they are
The Portico Guide is an independent reference to eighteen hotels, grouped in four categories: ice, casino, art and capsule. Each entry describes the building, how its public rooms are arranged, and what is worth settling by email before a stay. Everything here is drawn from published sources and from the hotels' own material. There are no prices, no rankings and no way to book from this site.
- Ice Hotels
Buildings of snow and ice that stand for one winter and are raised again the following year.
Four hotels - Casino Hotels
Four Canadian resorts described as buildings: concert halls, restaurants, spa floors and the ground beneath them.
Four hotels - Art Hotels
Six houses where the fittings, the collection or the building itself is the reason to look closely.
Six hotels - Capsule Hotels
Compact berths and uniform rooms, in city centres and inside airports, arranged for short and plain stays.
Four hotels
All eighteen
- Arctic SnowHotelRovaniemi, Finland
- Kakslauttanen Arctic ResortSaariselkä, Finland
- SnowCastle of KemiKemi, Finland
- Sorrisniva Igloo HotelAlta, Norway
- Montréal Casino & HotelÎle Notre-Dame, Montréal, Québec, Canada
- Fallsview Casino ResortNiagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
- River Rock Casino ResortRichmond, British Columbia, Canada
- Casino Rama ResortRama, Ontario, Canada
- Hotel LocarnoRome, Italy
- Hotel MetropoleVenice, Italy
- Hôtel Saint-MarcParis, France
- Hotel WieslerGraz, Austria
- Casa PalopóSanta Catarina Palopó, Guatemala
- Hotel Bela VistaPortimão, Portugal
- nine hours KanazawaKanazawa, Japan
- citizenM RotterdamRotterdam, Netherlands
- Zleep Hotel Copenhagen AirportCopenhagen, Denmark
- Aerotel Kuala LumpurKuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
How this is put together
Hotels were chosen to fill four categories and no more than that. Nothing on this site is placed above anything else, compared with anything else or marked as a recommendation. Each entry describes a building and its public rooms, using what the hotel and other published sources actually say about them.
Sources are the hotels' own pages, mapping services and published writing about the buildings. Where a claim could not be confirmed, it was rewritten until it could stand without that source. Details go out of date quickly, so every entry carries the month in which it was last checked.