Questions about Tourism

[cogeo]

Does anybody know how tourism works in SC4? I know there are some tourist buildings/lots, a "Commercial Hotel" Occupant Group (any others please?) and an Ordinance too. However, they just appear to work like normal CS lots (with the demand determined by the city pop). But in real world tourism is a source of income itself, much like industry, ie a considerable economy sector. In SC4 it should create jobs (as it does), but not satisfy commercial services demand, as the money comes from "external" sources; eg I don't see how tourism hurts (competes with) shops, it rather benefits them instead.

I'm considering making some tourist BATs (mainly ploppables), but have no any idea about their workings and the game mechanics. Any insight on this please?

[MattyFo]

I think you have two options here.you could leave it up to the imagination, like i have done for many real world aspects in SC4, or you could go all out and make a mod and go for all out realism.

  I don't think the game's mechanics dwells to much on tourism exept for, as you had mentioned, the Ordinance and the few reward buildings (Resort Hotel, Tourist Trap,)  I think if you wanted to you could create tourist Bats.  Make them ploppable and call them something "touristy", have them generate some sort of income for the city and leave it at that.  Because I am no genius and have never dwelled into the mechanics of the game ( I let you guys do that for me) I don't think you should take my word for it, that there isn't anything already in the game. 

If you really wanted to make this tourism thing realsitic,  if it is possible to mod the game so that there is a Tourism category in the city budget, (you know the green and red dealy) and all those tourism buildings put in the city would have to generate more cash then they need to sustain them selves.  Now the income of the tourism would have to be relative to some aspect of your city to see exactly how many tourist you are getting, more tourists more cash.  Off the top of my head, you could use the actual usage of your airport/airports, combine them and then take a rather large percentage of those flying into your city and make them tourists. 

To summarize,  In the budget screen your income depends on the amount of tourists comming in and your expenses are the cost of running the buildings and the amount your spenidng on tourism premotion.  To make things more realistic, (complicated) each of your tourist building could have a desirability factor,  i;e Most people would rather go to Disney Land than eat at a famous local restaurant.  So having something like Disney Land in your city would bring in so many more tourist then a restaurant but will cost you an arm and a leg.  Im going to stop here becasue really, I could go on and on about this.  Im going to assume you got my point by now.

MattyFo

[xxdita]

Living in Orlando most of my life, I can tell you a thing or two about tourism.
The amount of jobs created by Walt Disney World moving in created Residential demand, which created more Commercial demand, which meant more jobs, and more people moving in... you get the picture.
Orlando has the 2nd highest number of hotel rooms in the States. Only Las Vegas has more.
Of course Disney found out with the opening of Animal Kingdom that no matter how many jobs you provide, you have to have people to fill the jobs. They used to be the only real game in town, but now with Disney World's 4 theme parks, water park, Pleasure Island, Downtown Disney, numerous hotels and time-shares, camping grounds competing with Universal's 2 theme parks, Sea World Orlando, Wet N Wild (a water park), Gatorland... all of the hotels... for the job market, those new positions can be hard to fill very quickly.
Much less the tourists to keep all of these places going, especially in an economy such as this.

But in SC4, airports don't actually carry Sims anywhere. So tourism, as we know it at least, doens't exist. It's only commercial capacity boosts created by airports, and any tourism rewards, along with a possible boost in demand.

Sims just go to work, and go home. They don't ever go to the park to play, or to a hotel to get away for the weekend. They don't actually go to libraries or museums, or even school for that matter; they learn by osmosis, if they're within the building's radius. The amount of customers for a commercial is determined by how much traffic passes by. Even if the food is lousy, a restaraunt can have great business.

[MattyFo]

But in SC4, airports don't actually carry Sims anywhere. So tourism, as we know it at least, doens't exist. It's only commercial capacity boosts created by airports, and any tourism rewards, along with a possible boost in demand.

Sims just go to work, and go home. They don't ever go to the park to play, or to a hotel to get away for the weekend. They don't actually go to libraries or museums, or even school for that matter; they learn by osmosis, if they're within the building's radius. The amount of customers for a commercial is determined by how much traffic passes by. Even if the food is lousy, a restaraunt can have great business.

Very true, that is pretty much how the game works   But if someone wanted to create a TOURISM MOD, it would be possible to use the "Accual Usage" of your airport to determine how many tourists are comming in.  If you query your Airport it will give you that number, mine i think is in the ballpark of 32 000. So lets say 18 000 of them are tourists.  Now lets say he were to BAT a museum that were a tourist attraction, depending on it's "desirability" by tourists it would take a portion of that 18 000 sims, 1000 visitors per month lets say, and that would mulitply by a entrance fee or what have you and that would give you the monthly income from tourists.  The same can be done by any commercial service or even office as long as it is a part of this "Tourism MOD"......whether this is even possible, I do not know.  Like I said before I have never dwelled into Modding so i'lll let a pro decide whether it's possible.  It would be a very cool mod and i will be more than happy to help BAT some of these tourist buildings.

[xxdita]

But there are no tourists actually coming in. Sims don't get vacations. Or even weekends. You can't query a mall to see how many teenagers are hanging out at the arcade. If an item like that is added to a query, then it's just a random number, Goofy Stat Response.
I don't see any way of adding something like you're suggesting, without completely redesigning the game, which really is outside the scope of the modding community. At least until EA decides to release the source code, but I'm not holding my breath.

[sumwonyuno]

Heh, I come from another famous tourist city....    The following are my thoughts, and how the game relates to what I need to achieve what I want to do in my region.

Modders can't necessarily create a mod, rather, modders have to work within the framework that Maxis/EA left available for us to mod.  I would guess that tourist traffic was a consideration in the original game, but the programmers never were able to implement it for the final release (or expansion pack/update).  We can modify things here and there, and we can add custom content (to a certain degree), but we can't add functionality to the game (such as a tourism simulator).

So what can't we do?  We can't simulate tourist traffic, like commute traffic or freight traffic.  We can't make a separate category of buildings (distinguish regular CS from a tourist building).  The game as it is mostly resembles rush-hour commuting of home to work and back for residents.

But what can we do within the confines of the game?  Growable and ploppable buildings can bring in income to the treasury.  Ploppable lots are allowed to have aura effects and properties.  For example, a boost in immediate residential and commercial desirability.  Enabling the tourism ordinance could increase the desirability of the city overall, and bring in income (as a "tax") based on the amount of commercial jobs in the city tile.  However, tourism does have its share of NIMBYs, such as a increase in crime, and substantial use of water/power resources compared to the average Sim (that lives there).

In the Capitalis region, I used CO buildings instead of CS buildings to act as hotels.  CO buildings provide much more jobs per tile than CS.  Ploppable lots can work as well.  I did not do the following, but as a compliment, there could be some growable residential buildings by the airport terminals to act as tourist traffic generators.  If you design the region correctly, you could possibly have those "tourist" Sims to commute to those "hotels".

[MattyFo]

So are you saying it is impossible to make a mod or anything, that would take a random number depending on city size, i;e your airports accuall usage (i understand sims don't accually travel or anything but this number must come from somewhere) and take a portion of that number to MAKE UP/PRETEND that is how many tourist are comming in.  And then we would BAT buildings, we would PRETEND they are major tourist attractions and have their income dependant on the Usage of your airport or w/e number you have chosen.  Basically, can we have a dependant income for a plopable building, not just a set number?

  Sorry if i was not being clearer before.  I have a hard time making sense through written communication lol

[BarbyW]

So are you saying it is impossible to make a mod or anything, that would take a random number depending on city size, i;e your airports accuall usage (i understand sims don't accually travel or anything but this number must come from somewhere) and take a portion of that number to MAKE UP/PRETEND that is how many tourist are comming in.  And then we would BAT buildings, we would PRETEND they are major tourist attractions and have their income dependant on the Usage of your airport or w/e number you have chosen.  Basically, can we have a dependant income for a plopable building, not just a set number?

  Sorry if i was not being clearer before.  I have a hard time making sense through written communication lol

Put simply - yes it is not possible to make a mod to do what you are suggesting. If Maxis ever release the source code it might be possible but until then it is not.
An alternative is to use BSC Rewards to simulate this.

[xxdita]

But you can pretend whatever you'd like. 

[MattyFo]

I see.....thats a real bummer, i think it would be cool to have that but i guess you can always make a plopable building and have in generate a fixed income.

[RippleJet]

your airports accuall usage (i understand sims don't accually travel or anything but this number must come from somewhere)

That number is nothing more than the commercial office capacity in your city that's got access to the airport.
In other words, if all CO buildings have road access to the airport, the airport usage will tell you the CO capacity in your city.