About Plays Arena

Plays Arena is a small editorial index of hotels. It exists because four hotel types — art, capsule, casino and ice — are usually described badly: art hotels get reduced to their lobby, capsule hotels to a novelty, casino hotels to their gaming floor, ice hotels to a photograph. Each of those is a hotel with rooms, staff, a location and a reason to exist, and that is what we try to write down.

The site is deliberately geographically open. We do not write from the perspective of one country, and a property appears because it is a clear example of its category rather than because of where it happens to be.

How entries are written

Every entry is prose. There are no specification tables, no scores, no star ratings and no invented guest reviews. Facts are kept general and true to the character of the property — the kind of thing that stays accurate between seasons. Short chips at the base of each card summarise a few of those characteristics; they are a reading aid, not a rating.

What this site is not

It is not a booking agent, a comparison engine or an affiliate storefront. Nothing here can be reserved, and no property has paid to be included. If you want to stay somewhere listed, go to the hotel directly.