Tourists suddenly stop coming.

by sased4
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Original Post

Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★ Guide

Anyone have any idea why tourists would suddenly stop coming to my town? I have no crime/health/garbage/sewage issue, there's an expo center with events regulaly going, 2 fully upgraded gambling halls, 1 fully upgraded ufo casino, 1 fully upgraded sleek casino, a gambling hq, a train station, streetcar/avenue system, busses, a ferry with cruise ship dock.... and suddenly my budget went red. I checked all the casinos and none of them even get over 100 tourists now. the ferry dock went from hundreds of people a day to under 50. the events at the expo only sell about 2/3 now.

 

any ideas? seems like eventually tourists just dont come anymore.

Message 1 of 61 (14,606 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★ Apprentice

I have the same issue! I had 2 gambling halls both were making bank, then on decided to just be stupid and go in the negatives. Casino HQ and a Sci-Fi Casino (Which got max 50 people a day, and was loosing 12,00 per day!) I had to shut it down because I was losing too much on it. I too had great Police, education, etc. Even had a University in my neighboring city, but of course my Sims in this city would go to that one. >< 

Message 2 of 61 (14,530 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★ Apprentice

I've got the same problem. It seems the game is just not well balanced for resort cities. I've replayed several games just to see if the situation reproduces, and yeah it happens every time. So it seems you just nearly cannot play resort alone, without other players' cities bringing you tourists.

In the last game, I have three gambling house, three sleek casinos. I've built Expo Center which is full every day, and that is still not enough to be in green :-). So I've had to build a financial department to borrow 3x100k credits to get a Pro Stadium. And the stadium events are nearly in green themselves, but they bring people into the city. And still, the city with 100k population is like -12k$ in red for half a day, and +12$k in green for another half.

Ooh that looks soooo stupid Maxis :-).

Message 3 of 61 (14,505 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★ Apprentice

I have yet to figure out how make money as a Casino city. Never saw a casino lose money like a Maxis city casino can.

 

I put in Greyhound busses and 4 cruise ship terminals to bring them in--have 9000 tourists in the city...still loses money. I put a bus terminal and a streetcar terminal in-- nothing. 

 

Anyone successful making money in casino city?

Message 4 of 61 (14,481 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★★ Novice

This HAS to be a bug.  I'm glad to know I'm not alone.  I had two successful gambling houses yesterday, and today they went big time into the red in a matter of minutes with no warnings or any reason.

Message 5 of 61 (14,474 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★★★★ Novice

I've tried a tourist city with mixed results. Here's what I've learned:

 

You need to have multiple cities in the region. You need to have big populations of your target gampling audience (eg to have a low-wealth casino work, you need a ton of low wealth people in the region. Same for middle and high.

 

Casinos need nearby commercial districs. Your commercial will naturally gravitate to hotels (which your tourists willa actually stay in). But if you have all high-density commercial I've observed, they will all try to corner the hotel market, and half of them will go out of buisness (E.g you'll have 4 high density high-wealth hotel all pop up next door to eachother. only 1 will survive), so watch out for abandoned high-rises.

 

Tourists, if they get bored, will take mass transit to a neighboring city. So your tourist area needs casinos, hotels, parks, and shops. Especially shops!.

 

Start small on your casinos and devolop your commercial for a balance of hotels and shops. Likewise, if you have 7 hotel spring up, don't equip your casinos with rooms our you'll drive your commercial hotels out of business. But if you want to have your casino make bank, then having hotels on the casino will definately increase the casino revenue (as the guests will play games the next day. If they stay in a commercial hotel, whether or not they come back to gamble is a crap shoot. PUN!).

 

While expensive and risky, if you can get the expo center to thrive, you'll boost you low and mid-wealth casinos. I frequently had sold-out expo shows, then all of a sudden they sold only enough tickts to break even. Likewise with the pro-bowl, i broke even once, and lsot money on every show thereafter.

 

I ultimately killed off my casino city and I think I know why: I had a big population so I my own city was driving my casino market. But I wanted to go dense so I plopped formal parks everywhere. I definately kicked up land value but at the same time, I kicked it up so much that all of my low-wealth tenements turned to high-wealth, and all of my low/mid casinos went bankrupt because I accidently made my city primarily mid/high wealth residence. oops.

 

Additionally you need a flawless transportation system. If you are like me and ahve a bus wait time of 240 minutes and a streetcar wait of 90 minutes, your tourists/residents will not make it into expo shows in time and you'll lose their ticket fee (in the explanation of the pro-bowl it even warns you tickets are refundable. No joke my friends).

 

If, at any moment you have power or waer hit the yellow, the entirety of your tourism buisnesswill be disrupted. If you hit yellow power during an expo show, the show is cancelled. if you hit yellow, casinos close.

 

Depending on the timing, (and liek it would work in reality) from my experience, if you lose power early in the morning the day of your expo show, and restore power in an hour or so, the show will go on. But if you lose it around the 8pm mark when the shows open, it's cancelled.

 

So you need to have lots of extra power and water at all times. One inturruption and you're entire economy goes to heck in a handbasket. Additionally, if I section of your tourist network is affected, all your other pieces will fall apart. Each casino feeds into the others. Every square foot of your mass transit network must flow smoothly. If you get traffic jams at every rush hour, your tourist industry will collapse because the tourists can't get to the next shop or casino, so they check out and head to yuor neighbors for more fun.

 

Half of this stuff I learned by querrying pedestrians. zoom in and find out their needs. It's a lifesaver.

 

And I note from being both a Simcity industrialist and tourism buff, that industries are way easier. If you want a challenge, go tourism. You need to be a master mayor, and you need the right site. Try for the ciries that have 2 highway entrances, and not just 1 offramp. You'll be drowning in taxis and need a smooth road network.

Message 6 of 61 (14,458 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★★ Novice

 

 

This is excellent advice.  Thank you for taking the time to post. 

 

I do still wonder if there is a tourism bug, because I have 2 gambling houses that were making great money.  I made no major changes to the city, and out of nowhere, within the span of a minute, both casinos went into the red and dropped nearly all of their visitors.  When I queried the wave of regional tourists who were headed back to my regional bus depot, they all said, "There are no hotels here, I'm leaving".  I have empty hotels in BOTH of my casinos and some big ones in my commercial areas saying business is just 'ok'.  There was no major change to the city wealth, traffic, or utilities when this happened.  I have a 100k population, loads of low/medium wealth residents and only low/medium add-ons to the gambling halls. 

 

Can you think of any other reason this might have happened?

 

 

Message 7 of 61 (14,437 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★★ Apprentice

Great advice--I'll remember it in the future.

However--it could be a bug. From what I've seen, casinos naturally INCREASE in profit/MORE tourists show up, so long as no problems happen.

Message 8 of 61 (14,425 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★★★ Novice

@chr0mat0se wrote:

Anyone have any idea why tourists would suddenly stop coming to my town? I have no crime/health/garbage/sewage issue, there's an expo center with events regulaly going, 2 fully upgraded gambling halls, 1 fully upgraded ufo casino, 1 fully upgraded sleek casino, a gambling hq, a train station, streetcar/avenue system, busses, a ferry with cruise ship dock.... and suddenly my budget went red. I checked all the casinos and none of them even get over 100 tourists now. the ferry dock went from hundreds of people a day to under 50. the events at the expo only sell about 2/3 now.

 

any ideas? seems like eventually tourists just dont come anymore.


Try more culture. You have 1 expo center for how many casinos? Get some medium to high interest tourist attractions and you'll have them screaming for an airport in no time. Imma bout to plop an empire states building then start saving for an Archology! That should solve my tourist problem indefinately.

Message 9 of 61 (14,415 Views)

Re: Tourists suddenly stop coming.

★ Apprentice

Despite wonderful advices of nargacugarex, which are mostly coincide with my experience, and for which we should thank him, the whole tourism situation is just a bug/disbalance.

 

The airport alone won't help much, I've had one :-). And couple of bus depots. And streetcars. And a freaking train staiton. The fact is, at some point, tourists just stop coming by themselves.

 

So, until I order some shows in Expocenter AND Pro Stadium, which means bringing in around 15000 people for the evening, I'm in red. If I forget to do this one day, or ocassionally do not have enough money for that, I'm bankrupt in one day.

 

So yeah, in the end you can still be in green by reserving & spending like 60K every day. And you should be pretty lucky (or pretty good planner, as nargacugarex said) just to reach that situation. That, or to build ANOTHER city by yourself to get your first city moving (if that will ever work, of which I'm not sure considering other people's complaints on the forum. Oh gosh)

 

Message 10 of 61 (14,378 Views)