What this is
The Mullion Guide describes eighteen working hotels in four categories. Every entry is written to the same shape and the same length, so that one house can be read against another without a table of numbers. This page sets out how the hotels were chosen, where the material comes from, and what the guide deliberately leaves out.
How the hotels were chosen
Each house was picked because something about it can be stated plainly: the sleeping arrangement, the fabric of the building, the way a public room is used. Houses were not chosen for reputation, and they are not compared with one another. Six sit in the art category and four in each of the others.
What the sources are
Material comes from the hotels' own published pages, from operators of the winter sites, from public maps and from published writing about the buildings. Where a claim could not be traced to such a source it was rewritten until it could be, or dropped. The month and year of the last check appear in every entry.
What is not here
There are no prices, no star classifications, no room counts, no reviews and no booking links. Nothing is placed in an order of merit. No affiliate arrangement exists with any hotel, operator or agency, and the guide earns nothing from a stay being made.
How to read the winter category
Structures of snow and ice are seasonal. They are built at the start of winter, used for one season, and lost when the thaw arrives; the following year they are raised again from nothing, usually to a new plan. Where an operator also runs heated cabins or glass cabins on the same site, that is said in the entry, because a heated glass cabin is a different arrangement from a room cut in snow. No season dates are promised on this site. They depend on the weather and are set late, so they should be asked of the operator directly.
What the two groups in the index mean
The index on the home page divides the eighteen addresses by the status of the place they stand in: capital cities of states in one group, every other city, town and rural site in the other. Large cities that are not capitals sit in the second group, and so do the winter sites, placed by the nearest settlement named by their operator.
One further note on the compact category. Only one of its four addresses is a Japanese capsule house. Two of the others offer small private rooms built to a single repeating plan, and one offers curtained berths in a room shared with other guests. Each entry says which of these it describes in its first paragraph.
Telling us about an error
If something here is wrong or out of date, write and say so. Corrections are made on the page rather than announced. The address is on the contact page.