Casino Hotels, four hotels

Guests cross from the city to Île Notre-Dame and then hand the evening over. Arrival is the last thing that asks anything of them. Coats, luggage and directions all pass to someone at a desk. From there the night runs on rooms, restaurants and a programme already set, and little is left to arrange.

The resort holds the whole sequence together. Its pavilions came from the Expo grounds, and the interior keeps that scale, so staff move guests between floors, dining rooms and the live programme without asking them to work out a route. Meals, housekeeping and the timing of the evening are all handled inside the house.

The site is an island, and the building stands apart from ordinary streets. Once a guest is inside there is no short walk to anything else, so the house has to supply the whole evening rather than leave parts of it outside.

Little is asked of a guest here beyond choosing where to be. The entrance meets one level of the hill and the rooms sit at another, and the move between them belongs to the building. Bags go to a desk on the way in. Evenings are picked from what is already running.

The house absorbs the slope. Lifts, corridors and moving walkways link the parts a hillside would otherwise separate, and staff keep the theatre, the spa and the restaurants in step with one another. Housekeeping, dining and the evening programme are all run from inside, without a guest arranging any of it.

Niagara Falls rises steeply behind the waterfront, and the resort is set into that rise. A building spread across several levels of a hill cannot leave movement to its guests, so it takes that work on itself instead.

Arriving is most of what a guest does. Some come by water and step off at the marina; others come from the airport road that runs nearby. After that the resort is entered rather than managed. A seat in the concert hall or a table in a restaurant is taken, not prepared.

The house looks after the water frontage, the concert hall, the spa and the kitchens as one operation. Boats are met at the dock. Rooms are turned over, meals are served and performances run to a schedule the resort keeps itself, so nothing about the day depends on a guest making arrangements.

The resort stands on the Fraser River at the edge of Richmond, with its own moorings and a hall of some size. Water access and a full programme both need staff on hand, so the house keeps that work to itself.

Outside the doors there is not much for a guest to take on. The resort stands on its own grounds, and arriving usually means driving in and stopping. Inside, a concert, a meal or an appointment at the spa is chosen from a list that someone else already keeps in order.

The resort is run by the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, on whose land it stands. It keeps its own concert hall, kitchens, spa and golf course, and staff hold all of them to one timetable. Rooms are serviced and meals prepared without a guest having to look beyond the grounds.

The resort sits away from a town centre, on land held by the First Nation, with fields and water around it. There is no street of alternatives nearby, so what a guest needs is kept inside the grounds.