About

Blue Meadow World is a small, independent index of hotels. It covers four categories and eleven properties.

The categories are art hotels, capsule hotels, casino hotels and ice hotels. They have little in common, and that is the point. Each one asks a different question about what a hotel is for: a place to look at things, a place to sleep and nothing more, a place with a stage and a gaming floor attached, or a place that exists only while it stays frozen.

Why paint cards

The site borrows its layout from the sample cards in a paint shop. A block of colour on top, a white strip of text below, a hole punched for the ring. It is a way of keeping four very different groups apart at a glance. The paint names printed on the cards are made up. They are not ratings, codes or claims about any property.

How entries are chosen

An entry has to be a clear example of its category, and it has to be operating under the name shown. Popularity is not the test. Neither is price. Where a property sits on the edge of a category, the text says so plainly, as with the compact rooms at Pod 51.

Before a hotel is listed, its name, location and basic character are checked against what the property itself publishes. Descriptions stay general on purpose. Menus, room counts and opening hours change. The character of a building usually does not.

What the site does not do

It does not sell rooms, take reservations or compare prices. It does not publish reviews or star ratings. No hotel pays to appear, and none is told in advance that it will be listed. If a link leads to a hotel's own website, that site is run by the hotel.

Corrections are welcome. The contact page explains how to send one.