About

Board & Square is an independent editorial index of hotels. It covers four categories and nothing else: art hotels, capsule hotels, casino hotels and ice hotels. There is no fifth category planned, and no ambition to become a general travel site.

The organising device is a board. Four categories, four squares, light and dark alternating, each hotel tagged with a coordinate. The coordinates are arbitrary — they are a way of pointing at an entry in conversation, not a ranking, a score, or a code for anything. If you find yourself trying to decode them, stop; there is nothing underneath.

Why these four

They were picked because they sit at the edges of what a hotel can be. An art hotel treats the building as a frame. A capsule hotel shrinks the private room to its minimum and rebuilds the rest as shared space. A casino hotel carries a regulated gaming floor alongside its restaurants and event halls. An ice hotel is rebuilt, or kept frozen, on a fixed cycle. Between them they map the outer limits of the category.

How entries are written

Each entry is prose, written for this site, describing what the property is and what kind of stay it suits. We deal in general, stable, true-to-character facts — where a hotel is, what form it takes, what facilities define it — and avoid anything that shifts week to week. There are no star ratings, no aggregated scores, no guest reviews and no prices, because all four would require either sourcing we cannot honestly provide or a commercial arrangement we do not have.

What we are not

We are not a booking agent, a broker, an affiliate or a marketing partner for any property listed. We do not take commission. We do not accept payment for inclusion, and none of the hotels described here have been consulted about their entry. Anything you want to book, you book directly with the hotel.

Geography

The index is geo-neutral. Properties are listed wherever they are, and the site is not written from the perspective of any one country. Details that vary by jurisdiction — minimum ages on gaming floors, for example — are noted as such rather than assumed.