Method

How buildings were chosen

Four parts, four kinds of building. Within each part the buildings are ones that a reader can look up without a paywall: a working address, an operator that publishes its own pages, and enough public material to fill six fields honestly. Where a chain does not list a branch, another working address of the same chain takes its place, and the entry says so in its own paragraph.

Sources

Operator pages first. Where the operator is silent, national tourist boards and other public reference material are used. Trade listings and booking intermediaries are not treated as sources for anything but the existence of an address. Where two sources disagree, the field is left as not confirmed rather than resolved by guesswork.

What the six headings mean

The headings differ from part to part, because the questions differ. In the winter part: Structure, what the building is made of and how often it goes up; Standing, where the ground is; Season, the months it stands, with the dates left to the operator; Warm rooms, whether heated buildings share the ground; Sleeping, how the night is arranged; Checked, the month of the last reading.

In the capsule part: Sleeping, the kind of berth or room; Standing, quarter and nearest station; Bath, whether a shared bathing floor exists; Access, any restriction the operator states; Chain, the operator and its address; Checked.

In the art part: Building, what the structure is and was; Standing, the quarter; Built, a year or a century; Public rooms, what is open to callers who are not staying; Works, whether a holding of art or objects is kept; Checked.

In the Canadian part: Complex, what the resort consists of; Standing, city and province; Public rooms, halls, dining rooms, spa and galleries; Water or slope, how the ground and the water lie; Land, the land on which the resort stands where the operator publishes that wording; Checked.

The value not confirmed

A field reads not confirmed when no open source carries the fact. It is a finished answer, not a gap waiting to be filled with something plausible. Nothing on this site is inferred from a photograph, from a review, or from what a similar building elsewhere happens to do.

Reading the winter part

The four winter buildings are taken down by the thaw and raised again the following cold season, so their walls, their plans and often their interiors are new every year. The Season field never carries dates; opening and closing move with the weather and are published by the operator alone. Heated buildings that share the ground, where they exist, are named plainly so that a cold room is never confused with a warm one.

What is not here

No money of any kind, no stars, no categories, no counts of bedrooms, no reader opinions, no booking. No comparisons between one house and another. No description of the licensed floor in the Canadian part. No advertising and no paid links of any sort.

An error in a field

Write to the address on the Contact page, naming the building and the field. A correction that can be traced to an open source is made, and the month in the last field is moved forward when the entry is read again.