My upcoming scenario will include hotel objectives. While play testing I've learned a lot about how to use hotels in the game. It's a little different than anything else. Adding hotel objectives to a scenario definitely increases the challenge.
Here are the most important things I learned. While I believe everything below is accurate, feel free to correct me if your experience is different.
Guests tend not to enter a hotel until they've been in the park at least six game months. If you open a hotel in March of Year 1, it will remain empty for most of that first year. The demand for hotels seems to increase the longer guests have been in the park and have not stayed in a hotel. On the other hand, the longer they are in the park, the less money they have. If they run out of money, they can't afford a hotel.
Once a guest has visited a hotel, their desire to stay in another one seems to reset. So I believe most guests will have only one hotel stay.
Only a fraction of the guests are interested in hotels. There is a setting in the scenario creator that is supposed to adjust hotel popularity. It does not seem to work, at least for now.
Hotels should be placed in high traffic areas. Hotels far off the beaten path get almost no attention.
Each hotel has a scenery rating and a prestige rating. These will influence the popularity of a hotel. Scenery's effect is indirect - scenery can raise prestige to a point. You can go up a prestige star, or two at most, solely with scenery. The scenery rating appears to be based on the proximity of scenery to all the hotel buildings rather than just the foyer.
At one point I placed a golden treasure chest adjacent to the foyer, but some distance from the rooms. Yes, there was an increase in scenery rating, but it was disappointing. I moved the treasure chest near the middle of the cluster of rooms and the scenery rating went up much more.
Guests' stay is five nights. A group entering a hotel on the 5th of the month will exit on the 10th. The game records a group's stay upon hotel exit.
I was unable to make very large hotels economically viable. I believe this is related to the fact that scenario editor's hotel popularity feature doesn't work. It would be a completely different story for large hotels if a hotel popularity setting of "10" (the maximum), meant hotels were ten times as popular as the default, which is "1". For now, this means building small and medium size hotels.
I suggest scenario creators use the default hotel popularity setting. Otherwise, if/when the feature is fixed, most likely your scenario objective will become extremely easy.
When playing a scenario you will notice that hotels become less profitable the longer they stay open. This is because the demand for hotels has been met. Your guest population needs time for its demand to refresh. I suggest keeping hotels open only about half the time. Like closed rides, there are no costs for closed hotels.
A management challenge is to find the right size for your hotels at each location. This depends on the traffic and can change as you build your park and its traffic patterns change. If you open a new coaster far from your hotels that moves traffic away from them, it will dramatically affect hotel profitability. Overall, it's better if your hotels are slightly "too small", so they can remain profitable even if traffic is reduced.
I'll post in the Scenario's section when my scenario is ready. For now, I have a preview video:
[video=youtube;_1y4ryLqUgQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1y4ryLqUgQ[/video]
The scenario is for those who want to "Drain the swamp". Purposely missing from the video are some things that (hopefully) will amuse. I don't want to spoil the jokes.
Here are the most important things I learned. While I believe everything below is accurate, feel free to correct me if your experience is different.
Guests tend not to enter a hotel until they've been in the park at least six game months. If you open a hotel in March of Year 1, it will remain empty for most of that first year. The demand for hotels seems to increase the longer guests have been in the park and have not stayed in a hotel. On the other hand, the longer they are in the park, the less money they have. If they run out of money, they can't afford a hotel.
Once a guest has visited a hotel, their desire to stay in another one seems to reset. So I believe most guests will have only one hotel stay.
Only a fraction of the guests are interested in hotels. There is a setting in the scenario creator that is supposed to adjust hotel popularity. It does not seem to work, at least for now.
Hotels should be placed in high traffic areas. Hotels far off the beaten path get almost no attention.
Each hotel has a scenery rating and a prestige rating. These will influence the popularity of a hotel. Scenery's effect is indirect - scenery can raise prestige to a point. You can go up a prestige star, or two at most, solely with scenery. The scenery rating appears to be based on the proximity of scenery to all the hotel buildings rather than just the foyer.
At one point I placed a golden treasure chest adjacent to the foyer, but some distance from the rooms. Yes, there was an increase in scenery rating, but it was disappointing. I moved the treasure chest near the middle of the cluster of rooms and the scenery rating went up much more.
Guests' stay is five nights. A group entering a hotel on the 5th of the month will exit on the 10th. The game records a group's stay upon hotel exit.
I was unable to make very large hotels economically viable. I believe this is related to the fact that scenario editor's hotel popularity feature doesn't work. It would be a completely different story for large hotels if a hotel popularity setting of "10" (the maximum), meant hotels were ten times as popular as the default, which is "1". For now, this means building small and medium size hotels.
I suggest scenario creators use the default hotel popularity setting. Otherwise, if/when the feature is fixed, most likely your scenario objective will become extremely easy.
When playing a scenario you will notice that hotels become less profitable the longer they stay open. This is because the demand for hotels has been met. Your guest population needs time for its demand to refresh. I suggest keeping hotels open only about half the time. Like closed rides, there are no costs for closed hotels.
A management challenge is to find the right size for your hotels at each location. This depends on the traffic and can change as you build your park and its traffic patterns change. If you open a new coaster far from your hotels that moves traffic away from them, it will dramatically affect hotel profitability. Overall, it's better if your hotels are slightly "too small", so they can remain profitable even if traffic is reduced.
I'll post in the Scenario's section when my scenario is ready. For now, I have a preview video:
[video=youtube;_1y4ryLqUgQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1y4ryLqUgQ[/video]
The scenario is for those who want to "Drain the swamp". Purposely missing from the video are some things that (hopefully) will amuse. I don't want to spoil the jokes.
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