The key to gambling and tourism: Hotels?

[kgpurrs 107]

So I've been experimenting with gambling and tourism for 2-3 days, focusing on medium and low wealth.  There are huge swings in revenues, and trying to find the balance has been key.  Revenue generating hours are between 11AM and 12PM.  In fact the revenues are so good at these times during an Expo Center event, that my casinos are filled to capacity and I could potentially increase those revenues by adding more casinos with nickle slots.  Between 12PM and 11AM though, revenues are dismal and huge losses are incurred.  After the Expo Center event I have about 500-750 mediums and 2250-2500 lows looking for a hotel.  I was finally able to get a high density $$ hotel, and it would pack 670 a night.  Medium wealth casino profit stayed strong through the night and instead of huge losses I was netting even.

 

So it seems that Hotels from Commercial are imperative for Gambling and Tourism, now begs the question: How the Hell Do I get these Hotels to Spawn?  I've literally bulldozed everything for like 4 months and nothing spawns.  There has to be some sort of formula to spawn hotels, I don't believe its RNG otherwise I would have got a hotel by chance.

 

Any strategies or success stories others might share?  If you got everything by chance that won't help us at all, that's just gloating. 

[Zpike 79]

I've also been trying to get them to spawn.  I want them next to my casinos but they spawn out in the city or not at all.  

[Rhadamant5186 19]

The Maxis team mentioned that one of the next upcoming patches will address Casinos and their viability as a specialization.

[TuPhat 27]

I found that the more cultural landmarks you have in your city, the greater the chance of a hotel popping up. there may be other factors part of this too.

[jas19illini 2]

Why not just add hotel rooms onto ur casino? The hotels that develop in commercial don't net u any money from tourists. At least the hotel rooms in the casino let ur tourists wake up and walk right past ur slots and blackjack tables giving them a greater chance to spend more money.

[galacticwarrior 9]

Well, I have placed 3 cultural buildings in my city and an airport, and tbh, there is so many hotels that they are going out of business! They are going crazy, the tallest high density building in my city is a hotel!

[kgpurrs 107]

Why not just add hotel rooms onto ur casino? The hotels that develop in commercial don't net u any money from tourists. At least the hotel rooms in the casino let ur tourists wake up and walk right past ur slots and blackjack tables giving them a greater chance to spend more money.

 

The hotels in my casino are already packed to capacity.  I have 60 medium wealth in my casinos in addition to my 670 from commercial.  That nets to 730 hotel rooms for $$ which is a perfect number.  I only have 1260 hotel rooms for low wealth.  That means that I have about 1000 low wealth tourists who could potentially be gambling but are leaving my city.  There is simply no more room in my casinos for more low wealth lodgers.  If I had 1 high density $ hotel, that would lodge 720 low wealth tourists instead of them leaving my city, 2 would be perfect then they will all stay over night, and 3 would be ideal then I could raze the hotels in my casinos for more nickle slots for more revenues.  My casino grow is currently limited to my hotels which I have none.  I'm missing out on a lot of revenues, 720 low wealth tourists that stay overnight is $7200/hr in revenue when they are gambling.  That's huge!

[Vaikin 10]

Why not just add hotel rooms onto ur casino? The hotels that develop in commercial don't net u any money from tourists. At least the hotel rooms in the casino let ur tourists wake up and walk right past ur slots and blackjack tables giving them a greater chance to spend more money.

The hotel addons for casinos are absurdly expensive and hold very few people. I had some commercial hotels, 3 beside each other and across the street from my casinos, they held 700+ each and cost me...nothing! Sounds like a good reason to me.

[Hybr1d 20]

How do you get hotels to grow from commercial? Do you need casinos next to the commercial zoning?

[perafilozof 143]

If you already have lots of commercial, anywhere in your city, and add landmarks they will turn into hotels on their own. They tend to be defused around the city, BUT they will always go up right next to the landmark building, at least one.

[TuPhat 27]

The game seems to increase the percentage of zoning a hotel instead of a commercial business at some magical point when you have enough cultural influence by plopping landmarks.   Zone commercial and wait for the building to finish.  If it isn't a hotel, just doze and let it build again.  Its very difficult to zone a hotel at the beginning, but after everything is rocking with culture, it seems like a 50/50 chance of a hotel popping out instead of a business.

[stormgear 10]

If you already have lots of commercial, anywhere in your city, and add landmarks they will turn into hotels on their own. They tend to be defused around the city, BUT they will always go up right next to the landmark building, at least one.

This is what happened to me after I plopped a Landmark. I'm playing a Region where my city holds only low and med RC. After plopping the Landmark, some of them changed into a bunch of (I think they're $) motels first And when I upgraded to medium density street, some of them turned into small motel buildings.

[Bibor_Kiraly 21]

Halbystarcraft has a great video on casinos on youtube. What he states (and I can confirm because I just did that last night) is that there are tourist magnets (landmarks, commercial zones, stadiums, space casino), tourist money sinks (gambing houses, slick casinos) and accomodation (casinos, motels, hotels). 

 

You want to place your money making (gambling) casinos between the tourist's point of entry and a tourist magnet.

[geekgirl101 7]

A standard gambling house is extremely cheap to run, placed in the perfect location it can rake in more than double its costs in a day (casinos cost at a hourly basis but pay out in a daily basis.) You can fully deck a gambling house and still make lots of profits.

The other casinos are a different story. I'm not sure how the daily profits work, if they include the cost of running the casino. Attracting the wrong wealth classes or being in an area that's bad for tourism means they'll lose money, and the more modules they have the more expensive they are to run. This is where hotels come in handy so the tourists are at least staying in your city even if it's not in a casino. The elegant casino costs 144k a day to run. Maybe if you fully focused on high wealth only and ignored any accommodations for low/mid wealth you might hit that number and make a profit.

Tourists traps can bring more tourists into your city, but be wary that you don't want them to completely steal the scene. They too charge at an hourly basis and pay out in a daily basis, but they're cheap to run if you ignore the opera houses since they cost 48k a day to run. Only use them if you got high wealth tourists only.

The trick seems to be all about placement and having clear roads leading into the tourist area and keeping other roads as clear as possible for police patrols to get through quickly. From the way it looks having houses built on main avenues is a bad thing. In less busy areas you can get away with it, but in busy areas it's a no-no. Also cut away unnecessary corners. This prevents cars from u-turning on busy avenues which can cause more congestion and annoys the hell out of tourists.

[Griffon 19]

after using purr's guide  can confirm that hotels are the key to tourism, but that does not require casino to have hotels, I zoned half my city with commercial and although that was way! too much the excess zones turned into hotels after my 1st expo event (I'm assuming you just need 1 of any culture building for this to happen also) and I had around 3k tourists regularly, as soon as a hotel went abandoned or I bulldozed them my tourism number dropped, then it went back up as more hotels were built

 

basically hotels are like the houses for tourists and my casinos (had sleek and sci-fi) in that city didn't have any hotels attached to them, so I was really making money off them because they were full and didn't have to pay for the attached hotel rooms

 

also the wealth of the hotels determine the wealth of the tourists, when I started to increase my land value near the hotels I got a sudden drop of low wealth tourists and a sudden increase in medium wealth tourists

[Jack_Bauer_333 2]

Yea hotels are key to running profitable casino city. I had one with 5-6 high density medium wealth hotels (most of them were right next to casinos - that took long time, but worked out very nicely in the end) and 3-4 sleek casinos with additional gambling space, they were profiting over 100k / day each + sci-fi casino and 1 or 2 gambling houses.

 

At the end traffic killed my city, I had ppl going for work at international airport and commuting from other city  + all of those tourists.