Is there a cap on tourists in the PC version of Absolute Power? I have a number of hotels that sit completely empty, while the skyscraper hotel is usually full, or sometimes only about 75% occupied. It is rare that any of my hotels are ever 100% full. I keep all my hotels set on auto 100% occupancy, currently have two regular, three luxury, and the skyscraper one. I have built most of the attractions too, and have an airport and 4 tourist docks.

(01-08-2011 01:24 PM)JonLewis Wrote:  Is there a cap on tourists in the PC version of Absolute Power? I have a number of hotels that sit completely empty, while the skyscraper hotel is usually full, or sometimes only about 75% occupied. It is rare that any of my hotels are ever 100% full. I keep all my hotels set on auto 100% occupancy, currently have two regular, three luxury, and the skyscraper one. I have built most of the attractions too, and have an airport and 4 tourist docks.

I have also noticed this,and have gone bankrupt because of it! I believe there it is related to the tourist rating, I think there is a cap on the numbers, related to the tourist rating, to prevent exploitation of the system. By the way, are you never knowingly undersold? (Ignore that if you are not British)

(01-08-2011 01:24 PM)JonLewis Wrote:  Is there a cap on tourists in the PC version of Absolute Power? ...

The short answer is yes. (possibly ~ 200?)

The tourism issue is discussed in quite a number of threads on this board. I can't suggest any special key words to narrow the search of the cap.

You are - I think - not understanding the meaning\purpose\use of the occupancy percentage setting; check member chrono's posts for the one with the semi-official view on how it is supposed to work. IIRC, A maximum of two tourist docks are all you will get any use from ; probably one is quite enough.

(Part of my answer also depends on my memory of some extensive tests which were reported on a now defunct forum.)

If I recall some of the reports and/or interviews, the tourism industry has been completely redone in T4.

My tourism rating on this island hovers in the low 50's. I've had other maps where I had it up in the 90's. Maybe something in this map is working against me. I may have "far away place" in effect, although I thought I disabled it for this campaign.

CoconutKid, I will try to search for the other threads. I have played a lot of islands and never recall having this vacancy problem. Honestly, I've never had much success with most tourist attractions ever, usually the hotels and villas make some money and everything else runs at a deficit.

(01-08-2011 04:30 PM)JonLewis Wrote:  usually the hotels and villas make some money and everything else runs at a deficit.

Typical -- and the "tourist rating" has very little to do with it. (That's why some call the game easy.)

Actually, that's a good simulation of certain kinds of resorts -- sometimes called "destination resorts". Check a similar "real-world" tourist area. The accommodations make the money and the attractions are the "loss-leaders." This is typical when the management of the entire area is consolidated or at least dominated by a single operator. There usually is not a single type of attraction which has the inherent capability of making money on its own.

Looking at your tourists' thoughts instead of just playing the statistics may help, do you suppose?

(editorial corrections in color)

(01-08-2011 05:56 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  Look at your tourists' thoughts instead of playing the statistics, eh?

Eh, I see that as kind of reactionary. I'm not going to parse the desires of a transient population and try to lag behind them with the appropriate construction. I kind of see it the other way around, like in real life. An island offers certain attractions, and the tourist should seek out places that already fit their desires. I know that is way too much to ask of Tropico given the way they chose to set up tourism.

Actually, I'm ok with my attractions not doing well. My only gripe with this island is I've never experienced this vacancy problem in the lodging category.

(01-08-2011 06:25 PM)JonLewis Wrote:  

(01-08-2011 05:56 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  Look at your tourists' thoughts instead of playing the statistics, eh?

Eh, I see that as kind of reactionary. ...

I'm sorry, but I can't relate "reactionary" to my comment.

IMHO, reacting to the NPCs is the core of the game. Their individual "thought" files are not there just because the developers thought they were cute.

Play as you please.

Tropico's "attractions" may be loss-leaders but they're certainly loss-makers. Only the Botanical Garden has ever brought me more than two visitors in a year: usually the BG gets three, one heady year there were five. The Pool and Spa I don't remember ever getting more than one, and often none.

Maybe you're simply having too many attractions and not enough tourists for them? I had a similar issue once when I built all of the attractions but only had about 40-50 tourists on the island at a time, so naturally they were not all full. But I just built more hotels and soon all my attractions were bordering on full. And they were all bringing in a fair amount of money.

One thing you could check, if you're having a hard time getting a lot of tourists is the Beauty and Crime of the area on your island where your tourism section is. If you need more beauty, add trees and parks. If you need to reduce crime pop in a police station. And make sure you never build tenements or ugly buildings near where the tourists stay. Only apartments or houses should be near there.

there is definatly a cap on how many tourists you can have in T3, and its lower than T1.. even with your island around 90% or higher with edicts in everything.. If you build one skyscrapper and 3 or 4 next size down.. and a few cheap motels.. i notice hitting the cap.. some just stay empty, no mater how many docks i have, or how many airports


As for entertainment.. I dont find that it should be a loss while hotels are the money makers,, that makes zero sence. In the real world, shops, restraunts, bars.. ect are the ones that make the real money.. while hotels dont make a lot... in most cases. I know when ive gone on vacation the vast amount of my money is spent at attractions, Not the hotel.. Pay 300-500 bucks for a week stay.. 2 grand on attractions.. thats much more normal than the other way around.. Unless your talking about an all inclusive resort. travel off time you can get a 2 week stay for around 500 bucks in some pretty ncie places..

I never got the AP Expansion but i can also confirm the hardcap on tourists in Tropico 3 with the latest patch.

It´s the Skyscraper and 5 Luxury Hotels for maximum profit any additional hotel built will just make the lowest rated Hotel stay empty all the time.
So the maximum seems to be sth. like 60 tourists while i sometimes had more on the stats those seemed to count only tourists which arrived this year.

However attractions are working absolutely fine and you can also make tourist only based attractions profitable.
The only problem is the tourist hard cap which makes the stream of tourists thinner the more attractions you build.

I tried some sandbox starting with a few motels, a bar, restaurant, beach resort and souvenir shop set to t-shirts.
So the perfect slob and spring break tourist trap was set up and once 5 motels were full the beach resort was overrun all the time and even the souvenir shop which almost never gets a visit in my other games was raking in profits.

The individual tourist stats and thoughts are very useful determining which attractions your tourist trap really needs now.
If a tourist wants to eat sth. for example and there´s no unoccupied, affordable restaurant spot on the whole island he´ll get pissed in his thoughts tab, get a negative attraction rating and then choose another attraction to visit randomly based on his preferences.
If you carefully watch the "already visited attractions tab" you can see which attractions a tourist visited and how he liked them during his stay.
Cause a lot of tourists like to take a drink you can often see tourists wasting their whole holiday time travelling across the island to visit a bar in a crime ridden area while my pool next to the hotel stays almost empty.
Just because I forgot to add an affordable drinking location to my tourist trap.
With a well placed tourist trap I sometimes managed to milk up to five attraction visits out of a single tourist.

A tourist hardcap luxury resort with night club, scenic outpost affordable gourmet restaurant and a beach resort will give you decent hotel profits and all those 4 attractions will make a profit.
In the long run however you want at least one attraction of each desire the tourists have in their tabs for example one beach resort for relaxing, one scenic outpost for sightseeing, a nightclub to go drinking and so on.
So you add a tourist-bank for the banking desire, a casino for gambling, a stadium for sports and all the tourist-only attractions will start to make a deficit because the existing tourists spread out on all those attractions and you reached the hardcap long ago.
It´s still worth getting one attraction of each desire cause as observed at that point the increased tourist rating will rise the hotel prices so much that you get 4 times the cash so it´s easily worth letting the attractions run at a loss.
This low tourist hard cap is still pretty stupid, especially cause it makes cheap mass tourism a non-option in the long run.
I would love an ini option or a mod which disables the low tourist cap but with the upcoming tropico 4 I hope that´s one of the changes they did to tourism.

Two little things for maximizing tourist cash out of the small number of tourists i´d like to add:
-check your hotels every once in a while with the tourist rating overlay cause tropicans love to build their little shacks well hidden within your luxury resort.
Two nearby shacks can already ruin the hotel rating making the prices plummet.
A useful glitch is just building a beautification item which immediately destroys the shack and restores the hotel rating however the tropican will soon build another shack nearby so in the long run you need affordable housing nearby.

-one tourist dock is normally enough considering the low tourist cap, once you get an airport you can even close down the tourist dock to maximize profits from the airport.
Don´t raze the tourist dock however cause it´s unfortunately needed to build the other tourist stuff.

(01-08-2011 11:49 PM)Tropije Wrote:  ... As for entertainment -- I don't find that it should be a loss while hotels are the money makers, that makes zero sense. In the real world, shops, restraunts, bars, etc. are the ones that make the real money, while hotels don't make a lot -- in most cases. I know when I've gone on vacation the vast amount of my money is spent at attractions, Not the hotel. Pay 300-500 bucks for a week stay. 2 grand on attractions. That's much more normal than the other way around. Unless you're talking about an all inclusive resort. Travel off time you can get a 2 week stay for around 500 bucks in some pretty nice places.

Of course, you have a valid point. I should not have made such a wildly broad reference to the "real World." The "real world" has a broad spectrum of distribution of intended profit makers --- just as in the retail trade it's hard for the customer to know the which are the "real" loss-leaders. After all, there is seldom a "true" loss-leader since loss may be defined as a smaller than normal profit margin -- something approaching mere "break-even."

My experience is limited to the U.S. where visiting a tourist area based on gambling (such as Las Vegas) or on snow skiing (such as Aspen) might be said to be opposites on the spectrum of which are the big money makers. Tourists take their money to Las Vegas to lose it gambling, so the accommodations are classy but cheap. Tourists take their money to Aspen to see and be seen, so the lift tickets break-even while the accommodations start where your vacation ends.

I guess you can translate it to gameplay however you chose.

(07-08-2011 04:01 PM)CoconutKid Wrote:  

(01-08-2011 11:49 PM)Tropije Wrote:  ... As for entertainment -- I don't find that it should be a loss while hotels are the money makers, that makes zero sense. In the real world, shops, restraunts, bars, etc. are the ones that make the real money, while hotels don't make a lot -- in most cases. I know when I've gone on vacation the vast amount of my money is spent at attractions, Not the hotel. Pay 300-500 bucks for a week stay. 2 grand on attractions. That's much more normal than the other way around. Unless you're talking about an all inclusive resort. Travel off time you can get a 2 week stay for around 500 bucks in some pretty nice places.

Of course, you have a valid point. I should not have made such a wildly broad reference to the "real World." The "real world" has a broad spectrum of distribution of intended profit makers --- just as in the retail trade it's hard for the customer to know the which are the "real" loss-leaders. After all, there is seldom a "true" loss-leader since loss may be defined as a smaller than normal profit margin -- something approaching mere "break-even."

My experience is limited to the U.S. where visiting a tourist area based on gambling (such as Las Vegas) or on snow skiing (such as Aspen) might be said to be opposites on the spectrum of which are the big money makers. Tourists take their money to Las Vegas to lose it gambling, so the accommodations are classy but cheap. Tourists take their money to Aspen to see and be seen, so the lift tickets break-even while the accommodations start where your vacation ends.

I guess you can translate it to gameplay however you chose.

I like a diversity of accomadations. If the motel and hotel arnt getting the traffic flow then I adjust the settings down to 75% on all the accomadations.
Same priciple for attractions. Why leave it at the default high price when you can increase traffic flow by lowering it so any tourist can afford it. Dont need to raise the price except to weed out the trailer trash when traffic flow starts hurting the Service Quality.

(07-08-2011 02:56 PM)Mr.Purple Wrote:  However attractions are working absolutely fine and you can also make tourist only based attractions profitable.

not really.. in t1 entertianment works a lot better for tourists and tropicans.. though timo has said a bunch of times that this area has been improved. Its one of the things im most excited for.

while making money in t3 has gotton easier, making money of entertainement is vastly harder, to the point of basically everything is a loosing venture most of the time.

(07-08-2011 10:35 PM)Tropije Wrote:  not really.. in t1 entertianment works a lot better for tourists and tropicans.. though timo has said a bunch of times that this area has been improved. Its one of the things im most excited for.

while making money in t3 has gotton easier, making money of entertainement is vastly harder, to the point of basically everything is a loosing venture most of the time.

While they cut out a lot of things which made tropico 1 such a great game I couldn´t find any difference to how the attractions worked in tropico 3.
With the roads and cars for free I even managed to get more attraction visits out of a single tourist during his holliday time than I ever got in tropico 1.
The problem is not the attractions, it´s the low hard cap on tourists, no way those 60 guys could ever fill up 10 attractions.
With only 4-5 attractions and 60 tourists probably all of them will make a profit but you´ll unfortunately loose massively on hotel profits due to lower tourist satisfaction.
Well okay there´s one thing were they made an attraction worse.
The offshore banking while being a cash cow in tropico 1 now barely makes a noticeable profit even with most of the accounts filled.

It´s like Tyroq said "too many attractions and not enough tourists for them" however unlike him I couldn´t solve this problem by just building more hotels.
Just out of interest could someone confirm if they raised the tourist cap in AP or is it still the skyscrapper and 5 Luxury Hotels for maximum profit?

I dont know how you can say that.. bars pulling in 3--k in a year.. gormet restraunts with profits of 30-50k, some times if you build um early even higher, small restraunts profits of 15-25k, even my caberets rake in money. In T3, if any of um break even im typically shocked.. And thats only if i keep um low paying.. In T1 i can pay the service industry very well, and still make some really nice profits.

In T1 you can defiantly make a more lucritive island with Just using toursim, vrs t3 you always need some kinda industry as back up. cause the only buildings that are making profits are hotels.. just click on the income overlay.. all service buildings are always loosers in T3